The Sevan Podcast - Greg Glassman CrossFit Origins #6 | Live Call In

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

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Starting point is 00:00:38 Save on home and auto like only you can at tdinsurance.com slash ways to save. TD. Ready for you. Bam, we're live bam uh hi hey should i go should i do a show talking about the behind the scenes yeah of course like go on pedro's podcast or something sure pedro's not just here I don't know I I'm uncomfortable talking about it on our own show like a jerk like I'm jerking myself off I mean I am jerking myself off not like um when I was in the shower this morning I was thinking about some of the stuff over the years that uh Jason Kalipa told me and that Josh Bridges told me and i thought also about having them on the show like at one
Starting point is 00:01:27 point jason's like hey dude i just realized at one point that the media is just a part of crossfit and that there's no reason to fight it you got to lean into it and i just kind of feel like i don't i don't know i mean i'm i don't want to get all preachy, but there's people like – I'll just use Laura as an example. I don't want her to like in five years from now, she's got a couple world titles under her name, and she's never got to like lean into the media part of it. And there is a really fun part there for the –
Starting point is 00:02:03 there's a really fun part there if you learn to accept that is this really how you spell Asimulaykum no Asimulaykum I like that when the UFC fighter do that you think she won't
Starting point is 00:02:22 embrace you out there I don't know i don't know what i'm not sure um but uh i think they will i just um i i you know and if she doesn't she doesn't that's fine too you know what i mean maybe someone just like fuck that but even even fraser was kind of detested media and look at even he came full circle. It's just this evolution, no matter what, like we know that every Pollywog turns into a frog. You know what I mean? It's like, that's why parents,
Starting point is 00:02:54 it's so hard watching a kid who's 13 to 16 year old go through their shit. Cause every kid goes through it. And like, you're like, dude, I could just tell you what's going to happen. So you don't have to do all this. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. They got to go through it, you know? Yeah, yeah. And it's here. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:08 Hey, good morning, Greg. Good morning, sir. Gentlemen. Morning, Greg. Morning, Greg. How are you? Fantastic. I am feeling good and happy to be alive.
Starting point is 00:03:24 How are you? I'm good, man. I'm good. We've got a house full of friends. It's kind of cool. Amazing. Happy birthday. Shit, that didn't take long.
Starting point is 00:03:36 Oh, wow. Birthday. He hates it. I don't blame you. I hate it. Can you do next Saturday? You hate the attention. Go ahead. I hit up Jake. I go, blame you. I hate it. You don't hate your birthday. You hate the attention. Go ahead.
Starting point is 00:03:46 I hit up Jake and go, hey, dude, happy birthday. He goes, my birthday is the 20th. I'm like, oh, fuck. I thought it was the 20th his birthday was. His birthday is between mine and my son Blake's, my oldest kid. June 20 and 22. I didn't know what day
Starting point is 00:04:03 it was. So his was two days ago. Problem. So here we are. Thank you. Yeah, here we are. Amazing. Are you doing it?
Starting point is 00:04:14 Do you do anything? Do you do anything for your birthday? Or do you just do anything for it? Buddy, we're sitting here on Coeur d'Alene, and I got boats and friends over, so you can imagine what we're doing, right? Right. Same thing you did yesterday.
Starting point is 00:04:35 Yeah, yeah, same thing we'll do every day. And with some of the kids and homeschooling and, you know. Life's kind of weird. And we're going to drink. Oh, what's it say let's oh leftist tears oh wow wow wow hey it's um uh it's kind of funny uh it's like that when you get older especially when you have kids people are like hey what do you want to do special on your birthday? And it's like, hey, I'm already doing it.
Starting point is 00:05:07 Like, I'm going to hang out with my kids and homeschool them and then I'm going to go out on jet skis with them. It's like. You know, but I'm 67 today and my kids want to make me breakfast in bed. And I'm just seeing this picture on Instagram where I look like I'm in a fucking convalescent home. Right. You know, right? I go, no, I'll tell you what. How about you make me breakfast at the fucking table
Starting point is 00:05:33 or the boat or something? Tell Kelly, happy birthday, Greg, for some birthday tacos. Thank you. He knows you. Will you do tacos today? Yeah. In fact, cater.
Starting point is 00:05:51 Serious? For my favorite taco truck. Yeah. Honest to God. Place makes his great quesadilla. Will the truck come down your windy road all the way around the lake to your side? Greg's got a bad connection today, right? Yeah, that's unusual for him. His picture's clear.
Starting point is 00:06:14 He froze for me. Did he freeze for you guys? Yep. Okay. Greg, you're frozen. Just so you know. We can't see or hear you. Oh, he's fixing it.
Starting point is 00:06:24 The magic is still there. Teleported to the... see or hear you. Oh, he's fixing it. The magic teleported to the... Oh, thank you. Look at Audrey. Jet skis cause concussion. Come on. Come on. Come on. What? Sounds like Audrey's all squirrely on hers.
Starting point is 00:06:40 I'll ask Greg that. He'll know about jet ski safety, too. Take your time. Take your time. Hey, I'll ask Greg that. He'll know about jet ski safety too. One second. I got to grab something. Take your time. Take your time. I was invited. I was invited.
Starting point is 00:06:54 You've settled down there. You've settled down. I wasn't invited to his birthday, but I'm always invited to the Glassman estate. You watch yourself. Here, I'll play this for you guys while we wait here. What are you playing? Oh, this,
Starting point is 00:07:09 um, I'll play this for you while we wait. Here we go. Enjoy. Enjoy this while we wait for Greg to get his wire situated. The lady gets on the elevator with me and all of a sudden she clutches her purse. It made me feel some type of way. And it made the whole situation uncomfortable because I'm pulling, she's pulling.
Starting point is 00:07:32 I'm pulling, she's pulling, I'm pulling. Just let go of the purse. Just let go of the purse. Misdirection humor. Isn't it great? Amazing. Oh, there you're back. Taco truck doesn't have issues coming down your windy road.
Starting point is 00:07:58 It's just like, it's all good. It comes around the back there. The driveway's got a switchback in it, but I don't know. You know, what I don't know. What I'm guessing is that it won't be the actual truck that we're buying tacos from, but they'll load all the crap up in trays with a foil, right? Aluminum trays with foil and show up and put it out. That'd be my guess.
Starting point is 00:08:20 Is it a good day there today, Sonny? Good lake day? A little warm. It's in the high 90s, i don't need that but perfect well i mean if it gets any hotter we're gonna come to santa cruz oh my goodness hey um greg i was thinking about this this morning when did you know that um um so so basically i'll bring it up to speed. So basically you, you were at one gym. What gym was the gym that you got kicked out of before you opened your own
Starting point is 00:08:53 location at a research circle or whatever that was called? It was it was called spa fitness center. Now I think it has a different name in Capitola, just South of the tracks there on 41st. And then you... A couple that ran it were pioneers in the industry. I have a lot of respect for them. We went through a rough patch there
Starting point is 00:09:15 where they tried to sink my submarine. Harry Jenkins went to Santa Cruz High and he built a commercial gym in the second floor of a bar he rented from someone and had a cave-in, an epic cave-in that made headlines with multiple injuries. And it was kind of a serious deal. And he was 17 when he did that. And so when I'm at his gym, he's, what, 75 or some damn thing. And so when I'm at his gym, he's, what, 75 or some damn thing.
Starting point is 00:09:52 And Anna Jenkins was one of Jack LaLanne's girls, you know, the girls in the tights. She had a couple of those and a couple of German Shepherds, white German Shepherds. She was of that era. And we clicked and then we didn't. But that was the last stop for me when Harry called me in one day. And he had a graph he had made of his training program, revenue from the training program. And what had happened was that they were taking a third of my get. And I was charging $75 an hour. So I was hitting $50.
Starting point is 00:10:21 And they were charging, for the other trainers were charging 40. And Anna had told us that no one will ever pay that much for training. And I told her I thought it was a value. If you look at what you're selling for 40, I think my 75 is a discount. And ouch, they didn't like that. No, they thought it was funny. And, you know, they liked it until he came up with his graph and showed me that almond morales and i were sinking their ship and uh taking some of their best clients you know the we were getting five day a week people that had been five day a week for five years with other
Starting point is 00:10:55 trainers paying 40 now they're paying 75 and uh that created some tension but he says you know you gotta go he even had a tear in his eye i mean i understood and he says, you know, you got to go. He even had a tear in his eye. I mean, I understood, and he says, I'll put you up somewhere. I've seen how you work. You don't use a lot of gear, and you don't need a lot of room,
Starting point is 00:11:14 and we could get something in Los Gatos. I'll help you out. I'll set you up. Oh, shit. He tried to send you over the hill, out of town. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I said, I love the idea.
Starting point is 00:11:23 I've been thinking along those lines, but I was thinking across the street. I had to beg for two more weeks. Let me say goodbye to everyone. When I went over, it was Claudio Franza, the jiu-jitsu guy,
Starting point is 00:11:37 who says, come over to my gym. Was he a client? Yep. I'd already been working with Garth and BJ and even at Spa Fitness Center. I was bringing in some people and they weren't enjoying that so much. The owners of that place didn't like you bringing BJ Penn in there. Yeah, not in particular, but by this MMA kind of clientele. And it's interesting because as a demographic, they're mild-mannered kind of clientele. And it's interesting because as a demographic,
Starting point is 00:12:06 they're mild-mannered kind of cool guys. They don't have nearly the machismo and bravado of, say, tennis players for what reason no one can explain. And then you go over to Claudio Franco's, and that's got to be tough, right? It's Franca. No, it wasn't tough. you go over to Claudio Franco's and that's gotta be tough, right? I mean, you're, you're just. It's Franca and no, it wasn't tough. It was delightful from the very beginning and every,
Starting point is 00:12:36 all but one client came with me and she was my handful train wreck client. And so I'm like, you're right. You know, who wants to work out on a jujitsu mat? I mean, I put a medal through the wall at Claudio's right there at the dojo you know you took me there the space there was tiny I can't even believe you ran a gym there yeah
Starting point is 00:12:57 yeah and then I moved with him when he moved again and then there was a period of about a year where I got tangled up with Barry Sears. He was dragging me around talking to people in gyms. How did you meet Barry? It was people that knew Pablo Morales knew me, knew Barry, and said I should hear what this guy writing meal plans for swimmers,
Starting point is 00:13:33 for Olympic swimmers is doing. And it was prior to the Zone book coming out. And they said that he could put on first principles of 40-30-30 diet, 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein, 30% fat, and thermodynamically tied energy-wise to three-quarters of a gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, I think it was. gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, I think it was. And I had, in tweaking Gold's gym nutrition analysis program, found someone to override the software. And I had taken their 75% carbohydrate diet, 80% carbohydrate diet, and hammered it down to 50%. The people at Gold's knew I was doing it, told me that uh they would deny any kind of responsibility or knowledge if it ever was found out i mean it was weird it was like i was selling crack in the gym and uh that's the part that i don't think people get how serious it is
Starting point is 00:14:41 gold's had a protocol of 75 carbohydrates you run into barry sears you lower the carbohydrate intake on some of this computer software that was like i already had i already had someone took it was vicky sims i believe that gold's gym in venice that told me to go get a copy of atkins book and i did did. And I'm like, wow, if this is if this guy's not full of shit, we should be able to reduce someone's carbohydrate load and see a physiological difference of some significance. I'll start with myself, three days of no carbs. And I'm like seeing trails. I mean, it's like the weirdest experience I've had. I've had my reality altered. And I have no interest in any more chicken, bacon, butter or anything else.
Starting point is 00:15:32 Now my calories have plummeted in 72 hours. That first day you can eat. You're like you're bored with food. That's all you got is protein and fat. you're bored with food. That's all you got is protein and fat. That was really outlaw shit back then. The things that man was called, what he endured,
Starting point is 00:16:00 he heaped on him from the community of cardiologists. They back they backtracked at the end, at the end. He was he was profoundly and importantly ahead of his time, a hero. Barry Sears, like a Florence. Of less deaths in your hospital, you know, how about we clean this place? And, um, you're, so you're, you're hanging with him and, uh, and going around the, are you going around the country with him?
Starting point is 00:16:35 Yeah, we went everywhere. And you do that for a year. Um, is it just the two of you? No, there were other people, some kind of cool folks. I met some good people. In fact, the Eads, Michael and Mary Van Eads, who to this day are even closer friends than Barry and I ever were. There was considerable interaction with them, between all of them before I met any of them. Sears had spoken with Bob Atkins. I mean, the people that knew the truth about carbohydrate
Starting point is 00:17:12 and its toxicity all knew each other, maybe in the sense of knew of each other's work, but in many cases had been talking, but it was a small community. It was a minority. It did disproportionately well in book sales. My father's truth rearing its head through industry. But I can take the books on the shelf. The covert Bailey approach
Starting point is 00:17:48 and the Atkins approach and the sales were 100 to 1 in the direction of the car restriction, even though it was a minority position. Chided. God, we're only getting like half this, Greg, because your connection's still so fucked up yeah that was some good shit too that is interesting how would you explain that the the book sale thing
Starting point is 00:18:18 if it's the minority position why are the book sales so high on it? I read Covert Bailey's book and eat nothing but pasta, and I don't come back with exciting things to tell my friends. I do what Atkins says, and I can't believe it, but guess what? My psoriasis went away. That's not even in the book. That was when the East shared with me. They love that. People go, hey, I didn't even it, but guess what? My psoriasis went away. That's not even in the book. That was when the E's paired with me. They love that.
Starting point is 00:18:47 People go, hey, I didn't even mention it to you. And Mike would go, what, the spot on your elbow? It's gone, huh? You noticed. Yeah, I did. But I didn't want to tell you that your psoriasis would go away if you reduced your carbohydrate intake. God, crazy. god crazy and the whole who's running the gym back in santa cruz at that time is almond morales
Starting point is 00:19:11 uh hold no no no i'm i'm kind of in between i uh you know from well Well, yeah. You know, Lauren's in there. Amin's there. And we had other help kind of quickly. Eva was coming around. Eva, what was her last name? Tordoka. That was the Olympian.
Starting point is 00:19:42 Yeah. And then he boots i made regular and quick coaches of clients so when we were doing seminars traveling around the world um and we got to that point quickly and i still was running a gym commercially uh i had people that had been in the you know 5 a.m 6 a.m class for, five days a week, more than capable of unlocking the doors and telling everyone what to do. More than capable. Tara Guglielmo comes to mind. I mean, the first time she trained anyone, it was 15 people, and it was like she'd been doing it for five years. She'd been watching for five years.
Starting point is 00:20:22 That's what it was. It was a quick study. It was easy. To open your eyes, look around, care, and say something. It's not that hard. Look around, care, and say something. I remember
Starting point is 00:20:39 we dissected years ago and talking about training people and this difference between perspicuity and perspicacity and I don't want to belabor that or even stretch my head and try and remember what was so delightful about that but we found early that there were people that you could ask what the salient features and I actually discovered this at one of our own training seminars with one of my own staff. And I asked him, so what are the, you know, what's the essence of a clean? And he gave me four or five points.
Starting point is 00:21:20 And I'm watching his client and the client's not meeting that criteria and he's not seeing it. And it was an interesting thing, an interesting divide to get to the point where you see readily the thing that you can test for. It's the difference between me showing you a leaf and you say sweet gum and driving down the road at 40 miles an hour, pointing out the sweet gums. It's a real world example from last week here, by the way. A perspicuity is when you,
Starting point is 00:21:58 something is easy to understand and pers capacity is the ability to observe it and understand it is that was that the distinction yeah i think that's the sense in which we were looking at it and it's yeah perspicacity is your insight into something when you see it or experience it perspicuity is is is about the object itself that you're looking at. How easy is it to understand it? Yep. And then you got kicked out of Claudio's joint. Yep, yep. He says that, yep.
Starting point is 00:22:41 And the problem was he says that people come by to see the jiu-jitsu and they see us out on the sidewalk and they drive off. They're going to have to do that crazy shit just is is that where you met um uh my kids uh went to garth taylor jujitsu and he had the story about how he couldn't win the he would go down to brazil and he couldn't win the world championship and then he met you and he started doing crossfit and he went down there and won three world championships the first i think the worst first white guy to do that in brazil in the heavyweight category did you meet him at claudio's or before then no i the jiu jitsu people were coming over that were working with claudio in that little place on soquel, Claudio's first spot. And so I watched Claudio's business grow from a tiny little place to a pretty good-sized gym, pretty good-sized dojo.
Starting point is 00:23:36 And Garth was known to me at Spa Fitness Center at the time. And he was another one of those characters, mike weaver weaver like eva t um you know like we would we'd have guys running hard on a treadmill turned off throwing sweat all over the windows and everybody and i'm like he's getting ready for you for you know so you were doing the air runner before there was the air runner oh yeah we were we were using the treadmills like plows forever wow forever and and so yeah I thought I did. You normally do. It's probably just a bald eagle or something sat on the line.
Starting point is 00:24:32 Hey, how many bald eagles have you seen? We have a baby bald eagle here. You have what? We have a baby bald eagle here and he's just showed up. He's been walking around in the trees. He's everywhere. Oh, you sent me a picture of him. You sent me a picture of him while he's just showed up he's been walking around in the trees he's everywhere oh you sent me a picture of him you sent me a picture of my standing in the road looking at you yeah yeah and here's how it works he wakes up one morning and mom and dad are gone there's no learning to fly there's no help there's no it's just like they disappear on his ass
Starting point is 00:25:03 and the neighbor said he'll live there in that nest is his whole life he'll never go anywhere There's no help. There's no, it's just like they disappear on his ass. And the neighbor said he'll live there in that nest is his whole life. He'll never go anywhere. Oh, they leave in the house. Yeah. They just left them the house. It's his nest by,
Starting point is 00:25:15 he has no idea. He waits and waits. He squawked for three days. Then he fell out of the nest. Then he walked around for a day. Then he did some flying. Yeah. He looks formidable already. It already dude he gives you a look that makes you back up yeah um uh so he kicks you um so so he basically says you're driving
Starting point is 00:25:40 customers away and you know i was there truth to that? It sure could have been. Because look, I'm running like, I mean, one of the first Fight Gone Bad things we show, if you look at the people in the Fight Gone Bad, I've got Crazy Bob Cook. I've got BJ Penn. Everyone in the pictures is well-known nationally or internationally in the fight scene.
Starting point is 00:26:08 And them competing out in a parking lot would slow down traffic on Portolo. Right. And I can imagine the kind of client I'm looking for in jiu-jitsu. And it was the very person they know they had trouble attracting, which was executives, right? they had trouble attracting, which was executives, right? A guy that doesn't want to get strong-armed, you know, for his backpack, but has a job. And it's all possible. It's all likely.
Starting point is 00:26:38 When you left there, when he asked you to leave, is there drama? None. Like, none. you left there when he asked you to leave is there drama none like none what am i gonna do he's 175 pound world champion jiu-jitsu no definitely not what am i left with you're out goodbye sorry i love you he's crying just like harry same thing tears and everything you have to go, buddy. Yep. And then this is the next place you move into? Is that BJ Penn? Who is that? That is.
Starting point is 00:27:10 Wow, he's got hair. He was such a joy to work with, to eat lunch with. I mean, it's hard to describe anything other than what sounds like a friend. But he is a friend. but everyone finds him enjoyable. So how about you? Are you scared? I mean, you're a trainer. It's got to be tough making ends meet.
Starting point is 00:27:41 Santa Cruz isn't cheap to live in. Each time there's these transitions are you scared? not really I was charging 75 bucks an hour and giving away a third of it now I'm charging 75 at Claudio's I don't think I was paying him anything it was insignificant
Starting point is 00:27:58 Eaton Beaver says good morning Greg good morning sir um uh rb bj penn has faced the who's who of mma yeah that's for sure yeah he's a hall of famer i would think i think he's the first two-time champ i think yeah he's for sure a hall of famer two-time champ. I think, yeah, he's for sure a Hall of Famer. You had Garth on a couple times. Seve, have you ever had Garth on? I had him on the CrossFit
Starting point is 00:28:29 podcast when I was working for you, but I don't think I've had him on this show. Garth needs to tell the story of the dude that attacked BJ Penn twice in one night. At a bar or something? Out drinking on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz.
Starting point is 00:28:46 They got in a shoving match on the stairwell, and the boys, Garth included, saved this kid's life. And then an hour later, he came buffalo charging from 100 yards away, and everyone just watched. And it was like some UFC street shit. It was crazy was the story. I wasn't there, so that's not my story to tell. But the beauty of the story is that wasn't there, so that's not my story to tell. But the
Starting point is 00:29:06 beauty of the story is that there was follow-up with the guy years later. And he was really excited to know that that was B.J. Penn that had done that to him because he thought there was some guy out there out on the street. He got stomped.
Starting point is 00:29:24 He got the ground and pound. mean it was like you need to pick john mccarthy there or something hey that's the difference between boys and girls boys are kind of proud if you get your ass beat on the street and you find out it's some famous fighter you'd sure rather i get it i didn't i didn't need that explained to me right i get it. I didn't need that explained to me. Right. I get it too. And it adds also an element of stupidity to what you did. Right. Well, you never had a chance. You never had a chance. You don't know who's out there. And, you know, this is part of the advantages of being a good person.
Starting point is 00:30:02 Hey, Santa Cruz is a dangerous place. Santa Cruz is a dangerous place to pick a fight it's thick with black belts and brazilian jiu-jitsu hey there was a period in the lineup at uh at uh at steamers at the lighthouse yeah where uh once a week some surfer get rendered unconscious and drug ashore and beached and whoever did it would go back out and catch waves again. For those of you who don't know, when Greg refers to steamers, I'll show you what he's talking about. This is one of the big surf spots here in Santa Cruz.
Starting point is 00:30:40 Santa Cruz. Greg, when I was filming 2008 or 9, I was filming with Allison NYC there, something for CrossFit, and we were right there. And I pulled my camera out of the car with Kerry Peterson, and two guys came over to me and told us we can't film
Starting point is 00:30:59 their waves. We can't film our waves. I i got a phone number for you when that happens and you just make a call to joey thomas and there's nobody out there that doesn't know that that old man owns the sand the rocks the beach the parking lot all the surfers out there and their boards. And Garth was a kid. People would come over from San Jose and however they ran afoul of the pack, Joey would just get up there and point to the transgressor. And Garth says all the little groms had stashes of rocks up on the cliffs in the bushes. You've got to keep your stash of rocks
Starting point is 00:31:46 and there would just be this greek-like rain of rocks from the cliffs if the guy that got pointed at and the guy would invariably get off and then and then chase the chase the kids at which point Joey'd get out of the water and run the dude down and beat him up and they'd call the cops because he attacked kids and the cops who also were all friends of all of theirs and arrest the guy for uh for attacking kids and he would get drug off and then they'd destroy the guy's automobile you've been pelted with rocks you know yeah so you don't go back and you don't ever surf there again and you tell 10 people about it and they don't go there it it was a you know they've been at this a long time jt been out on those waves for for a long time it's also black belt brazilian jiu-jitsu it was a serious trip
Starting point is 00:32:41 how were the like 87 black belts come out of Santa Cruz? Holy shit. It's crazy. And you think it's just a mill? Not really. No, man. No, no. They're all savages.
Starting point is 00:32:58 I know PhD chemists. I mean, you know, look, John Frankel, who I believe was perhaps Tenzo Gracie's first black belt, came out of Santa Cruz as well. The interest in jiu-jitsu is 20 years old in Santa Cruz, 25 years old. It predates UFC dramatically. I'm looking up his name. See if I can find him. Greg, when you moved from the jujitsu place to the, to the other spot in Santa Cruz there, did you,
Starting point is 00:33:34 at any point in time to those moves where you're like, Holy shit, I'm, I'm onto something here. Or did you kind of know almost right away? There was a desperation to all of it until we got at Research Park and you saw that final place. And there was something about paying the lease where for the first time ever, I felt like I was in business. It was weird. I mean, it shouldn't have felt that way,
Starting point is 00:33:56 but it did. And the pride was immense and the rent was easy. It was easy to make. It was way less. That was kind of proof of concept. There was a psychological piece there all of a sudden. Like you grew up.
Starting point is 00:34:08 It was a rite of passage. Here's the thing. When I asked myself where my clients came from, I would say, well, other clients bought them. But the clients they brought were clients that were very often also members of the Spa Fitness Center. So I wasn't sure what the originating gym's contribution was to the health
Starting point is 00:34:27 and growth of my practice. And it turned out it was negative, not positive. And new clients came from old clients and they didn't have to already belong to anything. I suspected that might be true, but you really don't know. I suspected that might be true, but you really don't know. Hey, the number of people I saw and met that had plans for escaping the working for the gym model, often these plans wouldn't work on paper. And so they were going to leave the gym where people are paying $29.95 a month, and they're going to charge $29.95 a month and try and do so in a thousand square feet with a $3,000 a month rent.
Starting point is 00:35:09 And you're like, it ain't going to work. It's not going to work. That model doesn't, you can't take the big box model and cut it down to 5% and have something even close to supporting a professional wage. And so the CrossFit movement was fundamentally, if you want to keep circling back to something in terms of business or economics, it was a professionalization of the training space. I'm taking this kid that's wearing a polo shirt, told what to do and how to do it, teaching them some essential skills for the transformation of the human body into something better and healthier and pushing away a lot of the trappings that you'd see in the big box.
Starting point is 00:35:54 And it worked. It worked. 15,000 small businesses, each of them delivering demonstrable health at a level that wasn't matched by anything else in the community and and none of that listen to that i mean do you hear business in there it's it's barely a business it's barely a business but it had sustainability and it had profitability so does it so does the catholic church i mean if you ask yourself is it old does it make money like yeah i think it does is it a business i would say it's not and i'm no catholic but i would tell you that it's it's fundamentally not a business also right the catholic church church also doesn't have
Starting point is 00:36:39 uh this is a really important distinction um uh doctors um taking their clients there to save them so this guy went to school for 12 years uh spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get tools to save people's lives and yet he still takes them to the crossfit gym to get healthy crazy that's the demonstrable part. Sorry, go ahead. You wrap yourself around the idea that the etiology of chronic disease is excessive consumption of refined carbohydrate leveraged with sedentarism. And and then the chronic disease itself are the symptoms of that of that manifestation of that. are the symptoms of that, of that, the manifestation of that. And it's a medical,
Starting point is 00:37:30 it's a medical problem only in the sense of this, of this set of symptoms, but the underlying etiology still is what it is. And so in the end, in terms of cure solution, resolution,'t medical it's lifestyle and so you could make the argument the whole that the whole of it is psychological because those behaviors the sedentarism and the and the in the uh gluttonous consumption of carbohydrate, those are both look obviously to be addictive behaviors. Obviously. Karn Thompson went through the vast carb aware camp and found common ground with all of them in this single issue of carbohydrate consumption to health ruin is an addiction. And we can talk about being addicted to sugar. And not one person found
Starting point is 00:38:35 a relationship or alliance with her difficult. No one challenged that. Not Tim Noakes, not Zoe Harcombe, not me, not Jason Fung, not Ufi Ravenskog, nobody. None of us. That one says, no, it's not an addiction. Oh, man, it's a recurring, repetitive behavior that even on awareness of the destructive impact, you don't stop. impact, you don't stop. Yeah. It's unreal that we've had clients that come in that know they need to stop. All the health markers are trending in a downward direction. They're sitting there crying, telling you, what can I do? And two weeks later, they're back to the same diet that they were before. I mean, it's just the same thing as it would be an addiction to anything else. You want to stop. You see the thing
Starting point is 00:39:27 that's happening to your health and you're still reaching for the bag of chips. You still just can't stop yourself from doing it. Sometimes, Matt, you'd see the failure coming when a person would ask after going through two weeks ago, they were crying at the improvements and then they come
Starting point is 00:39:44 at you with, okay, how long do I have to eat like this? I'm like, oh, shit. And you can go right back today. I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I had it so strong that I once had a client, and I'm not even kidding here, first told me right away day one, because usually in the on-ramp course we talk about it, added sugars and refined carbohydrate. I get them looking at the food label. And the lady looked at me and she
Starting point is 00:40:09 got very serious. She goes, you're not taking away my diet Coke. I said, okay, no worries. No one's going to take away the diet Coke. And we got her just focused on the exercise and she was moving. And about a week into it, as we still have the discussion, she literally showed up with the doctor's note as to why the movement wasn't good for her. And she wasn't comfortable around the discussions of getting rid of the soda. Because once I find out that if you're an avid soda drinker, that's the first thing that we attack is get rid of the liquid sugar, get rid of the sodas. You ever get a doctor's note from a client, Greg? you ever get a doctor's note from a client gray i've been asked to call a doctor and you know memorable instances of that i had a client whose uh uh oncologist invited me to a
Starting point is 00:41:00 mutual friend's house for dinner and the oncologist was looking to meet with me that's a cancer doctor oncologist yeah yeah and she threw up some uh chest x-rays at a kitchen window just you know not even a light box right and uh asked me if i knew what i was looking at i said yeah it's a asked me if I knew what I was looking at. I said, yeah, it's lungs with spots in them. And she goes, yeah, it's that cluster of grapes. It's not good. And then she's got another one, and there's just a couple of them in some kind of whitish spots where they were and she goes you know what's going on here and i said fewer and she goes yeah it's a full-blown active remission going on here and she goes so what's going on and i told her um that's your field not mine i just i just changed what's in the shopping cart. I was concerned more about her in totality. I know that the carbohydrate
Starting point is 00:42:09 toxicity provides advantage to no organ system. It doesn't help your sleep the way you think. It doesn't increase your bench press. You don't have better bowel movements. There's no upside. It has all the charm of fentanyl addiction, including sudden death.
Starting point is 00:42:34 Jacqueline Robinson, $50. Thanks, Jacqueline. That's awesome. I missed the live, so here's my behind-the-scenes donations. That's kind to you. The only reason I have money to donate is because CrossFit changed every part of my life including my
Starting point is 00:42:48 financial thank you thank you thank you for changing my life sweet dude thanks for always being here by the way Jacqueline Sevan's dog coach we dogs always knew about sugar oh
Starting point is 00:43:02 okay fair enough I think thank you for the insight We dogs always knew about sugar. Fair enough. Thank you for the insight. I had a client bet me once a million dollars. He was trying to bet me a million dollars that my dog, my pit bull, would eat his candy bar, his French chocolate. I knew there was no way the dog would take the chocolate. There's no way I knew it. And I was just about to reach out and grab his big hand when it hit me what an unlivable hell it would be to train this man for free until a million dollars were erased out of the debt. And I didn't. And I told him, dude, I wouldn't survive training you for free
Starting point is 00:43:46 for a million dollars until a million dollars was spent. And remember, this is the guy that would leave me waiting six hours a day, right? And I was getting paid 2x for that. So I'm like, and so he's, damn. So he threw his piece of french chocolate on the ground anyways that was like giving away the million dollar scratcher
Starting point is 00:44:18 to someone did that come in no you broke up we just heard that that the i think the chocolate's thrown on the ground do i have a house full of people streaming here is that my problem maybe no oh oh streaming oh oh yeah yeah yeah you got 15 iphones on your system? Yeah. Yeah, maybe. That's a good point. Shawshank Fit. Shawshank Fit.
Starting point is 00:44:53 Let me finish what I'm hearing. The dog didn't take the chocolate right after I refused the handshake. Oh. I was like, it's like $2 million away. He would have paid me too. He would have, he would have paid me.
Starting point is 00:45:12 Wow. How significant would that million have been at that time? Oh, huge, huge. That one probably sat with you for a little bit. I probably would have quit training him. Happy birthday to the best. I love you, Greg.
Starting point is 00:45:27 Thanks for creating an amazing community of excellent and hardworking people. You changed my life 15 years ago. I'm old school. You're very welcome and thank you. And you're still pretty. Olson dudes. Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning, Matt. Keep bringing all the awesome content and conversations. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:45:47 Thank you for your generous donation. Here's the Jake Chapman with Jake. You're crazy. Jake Seve. Does Greg think Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been a decent CrossFitter? I do. I do too. Yeah. He was, you know, we've got, we got free space at the Arnold. You can pay a fortune at the Arnold. We got the top spot. And Arnold launched our workout, and he couldn't have been more kind.
Starting point is 00:46:16 And he seemed to truly get it. So I want to go back. So you move into Research circle um uh research park drive and there is some sort of psychological component there that you're like oh shit my my shit can float itself i have i have my own space it's paying rent it's like you have a right of passage moment it it was so interesting to me that i actually went down to capitola book cafe and i thought i now that i'm a businessman i have a business because you know what my next door neighbor is a muffler shop and right you know yeah on here and uh so i went and
Starting point is 00:47:00 looked at the business books and it was i I came home empty handed because I, everything was about what we'd call marketing about, about the way you would advertise, promote or attract customer. And there was nothing on, on the essence of improving a product or service, nothing. And so I thought, wow. And what happened is I had to, I had to create that for myself. And my sister here is saying that's also a time when Greg didn't even have a car and that's true too, right? That's all true. You'd ride, ride your bike to, to the gym.
Starting point is 00:47:42 Yep. Tank Reeve also throws in, Arnold Schwarzenegger also said, screw your freedom in regards to the COVID injections. He did that too. Screw your freedoms. The line is, is that politics make for strange bedfellows. And here I am now, have found myself several times
Starting point is 00:48:03 in very friendly conversation with RFK Jr. And he and I would have, we could argue on probably everything you could imagine politically, except the horrors of a U.S.-funded development of a vaccine for profit on the, in the creation of the virus and the no need for the vaccine, perhaps anyways, the destruction of our schools, the erosion of our liberties. I mean, these aren't small issues, but yeah, fuck Arnold for that. You know, he's a, he's a, he's a, He's a nice guy. You hear what I'm saying?
Starting point is 00:48:46 He was nice. He understood it. And I think he could have done well at the games. Just like all the other games champions. I mean, that's what I can say about them. They've been nice. Most of them. Brandon Lecoq. He was on the show the other day he gave away some free tickets
Starting point is 00:49:10 um here's to the behind the scenes fund uh hearing everyone's story yesterday was incredible thank you thank you brandon thank you for giving away those free tickets greg are you going to the games yeah i guess i am i'm gonna be there i'm not uh i'll remind everyone is there's nothing more exciting to me than than uh than participating in the in the incredible transformation that comes about through, through, uh, what it is that we do. Um, and few things as boring as watching someone exercise, you know? And so I'm not, I'm not, uh, you know, I got a lot of cars, but I'm not into motor sports. You know what I mean? It's, uh, what can I tell you? I, the games were never that interesting to me.
Starting point is 00:50:06 When we made the thing truly international, that was interesting to me. I mean, my greatest games moment was when I actually delayed the start of the games because there were 100 black people with flags. I couldn't even tell. Reebok made uniforms and I couldn't see what country. So I had to recognize the country from Africa that none of us could point out on a map by its flag.
Starting point is 00:50:35 And I took the time to actually find out, so I'm sorry I don't recognize the flag, where are you from? That was cool. That was cool. It felt like a grown-up product at that point. We had global inclusion and we also, there was zero dilution. Schmucko was still going to win, you know? It didn't alter anything. And we had people from everything. He's a nice Schmucko. He's a nice schmucko
Starting point is 00:51:05 He's nice Holy shit Hey so I can't wait to talk to you after When Rogan says that he made me Millions of dollars Yeah That's the stupidest things any games champions ever said
Starting point is 00:51:23 It's going to be fun talking to you after the game That's the stupidest things any games champions ever said. It's going to be fun talking to you. So are you going there just to say hi to friends? Is that what you're going there to see affiliates? Like, what are you doing there? Why are you going there? I kind of can't believe you're going there. Dale King got a campsite for me.
Starting point is 00:51:40 Super, super affiliate. And Craig Howard wants me to be there. daniel chaffee's coming from france even though he's resigned from the from the country uh managers he's still going to work the affiliate lounge and would like for me to be there and so i love all those people and if i if i could cruise through and not have to keep moving, it'd be fun. It'd be fun. My plan is to leave here on the 3rd, be there the 4th, and come back on the 5th. Let me ask you some of the crazy questions people ask me,
Starting point is 00:52:21 because I'm going to go to the games this year too. people ask me because i'm gonna go to the games this year too or is any part of you nervous after kind of being out of the scene for a while in no no it's it's just in this in this regard nervous probably doesn't describe it right um you've told me that i'm gonna be miserable yeah I tried to talk him out of going. When I know you well enough, and you know me well enough, after you tell me that, I don't want to go for 48 hours.
Starting point is 00:52:53 Right, right, right. And then people talk me back into it again. And so, yeah, there's a little bit of nervousness that I'm going to be fucking miserable. But the other thing is it's only 24 hours. Mm-hmm. Right. I don't get anything It's a hard thing
Starting point is 00:53:12 To have strangers Tell you that they love you And if you love that There's something wrong with you If you do that There's seriously something Hollywood walk of Fame wrong with you. Well, I also know you don't like to be kind of like held hostage or trapped somewhere.
Starting point is 00:53:32 You like to, and it's going to, there's going to be a situation where you're going to be like, it's going to be a lot. It used to, it used to be what I just saw as the job. Right. And. Well, it was your baby. They were your kids. They were your job. Right. Well, it was your baby. They were your kids. They were your kids. It was your, what's that called?
Starting point is 00:53:50 A mom has her brood. It was your brood. I guess it still is sort of your brood. I watched Bob Harper stand on an intersection and shake hands and hug people and talk to them. And at each instance, he stayed there talking until they broke we did that one day three hours i've seen you do that at events i understood it i commend him for it i get where when you do what he does you kind of have to whether you're an athlete or an actor or my in my sense my values are is that you have that obligation professionally,
Starting point is 00:54:26 personally, and ethically to the support. But if you need it for your soul, or if you're getting off on it, it's a different thing. Hey, you know, Axel Pfluger had a woman rush him at his temple after services one day. And she had been in a coma at the Mayo Clinic. And she remembered all the nice things he said to her. And she had worked hard to find him within the system and couldn't, so found him outside.
Starting point is 00:55:00 Tracked him down from the internet to his temple. What's it like to trade crypto on Kraken? Let's say I'm in a state-of-the-art gym surrounded by powerful-looking machines. Do I head straight for the squat rack? I could, but this gym has options, like trainers, fitness pros, spotters to back me up. That's crypto on Kraken. Powerful crypto tools backed by 24-7 support and multi-layered security. Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves
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Starting point is 00:56:00 Book with your local travel agent or... Isn't that a great story? That is a great story. For those of you who don't know who Axel Pfluger is, Axel Pfluger is a PhD MD who ran at the Mayo Clinic the most successful diabetes
Starting point is 00:56:19 treatment center type 2 diabetes treatment center for like 16 years straight or some crazy shit and he reached out to greg and said i'd like to meet with you and so greg flew out to boston and i flew with greg to meet him and he's the one who he said holy fuck dude greg's like what he goes i run the most successful type 2 diabetes treatment center in the world for 13 years in a row and you actually through crossfit have the cure for the world's most vexing problem and greg said how do you know that and he fucking
Starting point is 00:56:50 pulled up a whole powerpoint presentation for greg going through all the journal articles um uh um what are those things that they used to have in the message boards and it was just fucking it was a torrential downpour of fucking people's lives who'd been saved from crossfit and it was just fucking it was a torrential downpour of fucking people's lives who'd been saved from crossfit and it was crazy it was like we were all blown back and i have that footage somewhere when he presented that to you it was nuts and the guy fucking left the guy left probably one of the most prestigious positions anyone could ever have in the in the type 2 diabetes world and remember phd md maybe he was a double md he was board certified in nephrology uh-huh um uh cardiology and internal medicine and was a phd pharmacologist
Starting point is 00:57:35 yeah crazy yeah that changed the course for all of us by the way that meeting that's one of those meetings that would greg was like, that shifted CrossFit a degree. That like, that's super, like, just imagine someone coming and telling Greg that Greg left that meeting like, and never came back to planet Earth. Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy. Did you have an idea that that was happening, Greg, before that? And that was just the collection of it in one. Greg had been talking about it. and that was just the collection of it in one. I think I've been talking about it.
Starting point is 00:58:03 Yes, but I also felt that it would be possible to have a cure for pancreatic cancer, a line a mile long of people waiting to get the cure, and the trailing line of cured five miles long and the world never noticed. I thought that that could also happen. You could have a solution to the world's most vexing medical problem
Starting point is 00:58:24 and no one ever noticed. And to find someone from that high a position so articulate on the matter and his evidence being material from our own message board, you know, like, so we got a thread with 500 posts on macular degeneration. It was interesting the kinds of things that he had found. One second. I got to stop this. Just a second.
Starting point is 00:58:58 Don't kick the dog. Josh Lehrman of My California Farm. Missed the live last night. More for the behind-the-scenes fun. Also love hearing Greg. I know this is great, isn't it? I had no idea we were going to talk about that. As soon as I was tripping, I was like, fuck, I got nothing for him.
Starting point is 00:59:13 Sarah Cox, $49.99. Thank you. God, Sarah, I'm so pumped. Thank you. Okay, so you could have a line for the cure it would be a thousand miles oh did we get the new um uh qr code for california peptides i don't have it okay i'll send her a text okay go do you remember where you were greg in regards to um uh fluger and the and if uh they were asking did you would did you suspect you had the cure
Starting point is 00:59:46 yeah i mean i we had we had a lot of instances of it but i again i didn't think that it would be likely that anyone would notice um on the established medicine side of the fence and in fact i had already come across several hundred physicians. We had made our own estimation that there was probably an average of three physicians in each box, at least as a minimum. And what I did, and you probably remember that for quite a while, I would ask people, how many dogs in your box? And what I found was there were some morons that didn't know and that's also a box it's nice in your box man i don't even know what people do for a living
Starting point is 01:00:36 it's never come up you know the lowest number i ever heard was three and Craig Howard had like 21 or something. And so I said, okay, three super safe. And I got 7,000 affiliates. That's 21,000 doctors who pulled their heads out of their asses, wiped the shit out of their eyes. And I've seen something that is wonderfully diametrically crazy opposed to the, to the norm, to the, to the mainstream. And it was networking them that was actually paying off in fact i can't unnetwork them i keep the cross the doc still hit me up like i'm still running the show and have inputs and want to know what's going on hey that makes you a massive threat to pharma. There's no question that basically pharma, doctors are pharma's army.
Starting point is 01:01:31 You're savvy putting a target on my back. I mean, there's no question. I've shown it so many times on this show that doctors were getting $170 to $5 a person per injection kickbacks. But nothing, I've had nowhere near the impact of RFK Jr. For those of you
Starting point is 01:01:56 in pharma listening. Him, he did it. Yeah, check out that guy over there. Oh my God. He's the real culprit. So there's this – at one of Greg's houses, we're in the backyard, and he goes, Seve, look over there. And I look over there at his neighbor's house,
Starting point is 01:02:17 and there's the fucking biggest building I've ever seen built in a neighborhood. I go, what is that? And he goes, it looks like the dude's building a fucking Walgreens in his backyard. And I go, I know. It's fucking crazy. What is that? And he goes, it's a basketball stadium. I'm like, what?
Starting point is 01:02:33 And he's like, yeah, so fucking his kid, the local neighborhood pros will come over and play with him and his kids. So he's building a fucking basketball stadium in his backyard. I go, what's that guy do? He's like, pharma. I'm just like, fucking a i've got another neighbor on the street that has a basketball court that the sons play at regularly indoor he's also got a a skate pool skate park doug and he's giving all the neighbor kids the code and he's got a camera and there's some pretty strict boundaries from the property you know when you're off limits and
Starting point is 01:03:11 lose rights and but the real thing is no helmet and he's going to shut it down for everyone it's pretty cool pretty neat neighbors yeah that'sarma shit, man, that'll make you some loot. Hey, promote Gauthier's book on pharma. Tell me the organized crime, something to that effect. Peter Gauthier, friend of ours. We brought him out to Santa Cruz. Yeah, I should have him on. He's a PhD MD.
Starting point is 01:03:42 He got canceled. He even took the shot so he could travel, right? No, no, no. Malcolm Kendrick took the slam jabs. He could go to his ski home in France. He's crazy. That's insane. It is.
Starting point is 01:04:00 That's how much he liked skiing. That's insane, too. Spell Gautier for me. Is there a Z in it? Oh, yeah. E-Z-C-H-E. There you go. Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime. Hey, Greg, can you get him on for me? I believe so.
Starting point is 01:04:20 Okay. Sorry just to ask you that on the spot. I'm going to make a little bit of amends for radio silence first, so give me some time. Really? He's upset at you because he didn't return a call or something? You know, I'm a couple of emails behind. Okay. But he took on mammography intelligently. He's taken on the HPV vaccine brilliantly.
Starting point is 01:04:44 The Gates Foundation wonderfully, psych meds for peds successfully. And when I met him before there was COVID, any of us even thought about cancer. I'm going to think you're going to get whacked. And then he did. He got not whacked, whacked, but they said he was guilty of inappropriate behavior in the lab with females in present. nothing ever came of it or mentioned, but that rumor in Indiendo got him kicked from the Cochrane collaboration.
Starting point is 01:05:11 And John Iannotti said it was a travesty that he was the most important medical researcher in all of Europe. He was one of the co-founders of the Cochrane collaboration. But he had gone against the grain, probably to the tune of a billion trillions of dollars trillions i mean you take start taking on psych meds oncology vaccine industry right yeah you're in trouble john i think it's john lecure was influenced by that book so profoundly that one of his super stories is a more exciting and dynamic and worthy of a movie kind of action story where a farm executive's wife is killed. executive's wife is killed.
Starting point is 01:06:04 I don't know. I might even have my author wrong. You guys can figure that out. It was interesting to learn that the book had been an inspiration. The author was so upset by what's in that thing. I just looked him up on Audible too. It's funny.
Starting point is 01:06:22 I wonder if he's not allowed on there. It's not an A version no oh not even as a heart not even as like a download um i want to go i want to go back and see if i can pick this thread back up so so then you're at research park i want to try to get to that question that Sue's answered. And when do you know that you're so excited that it's one gym and you're paying your rent and you're able to get new inner tubes for your bike and maybe buy a pickup truck? But when do you know that, like, oh, shit, this thing's about to run away? This thing's about to just like explode.
Starting point is 01:07:08 You know, it, it 15 or 20 affiliates. I've got people like TJ Cooper telling me stories that I recognize him. He's, he's telling me, you're not going to believe it, but I got a lady that had diabetes and now she doesn't, you know? And this is years before meeting Pfluger we're talking 2005 right okay uh 2002 two okay 2003 okay i got i got brand new fledging affiliates we don't even have 30 of them and i got uh tony budding in the cold carol running my affiliate program is crossfit using the impact font by that time is that official or um you know the the when we when when the journal launched um we launched
Starting point is 01:07:57 that with a set of fonts that we licensed from gil sands i Last time I had trouble with his name. What had happened was my artist, I told him that I really liked the font and the style and much of the presentation of Cook's Illustration, Cook's Illustrated. That when they were showing a final production, the ta-da moment, it was a photograph, but all processes were illustrations. And the process illustrated better than it photographed and look at these cool fonts and then Otto comes back and goes there's actually like six or seven different fonts and they and they all remind me of Gil Sands so he called Cooks Illustrated and they said we paid Gil Sands for those fonts so then we asked Gil Sands if we could license those fonts
Starting point is 01:08:42 and he says if Cooks Illustrated doesn't care. And so we did. And so it's more than just impact. There were 10 or 11 fonts that were used in Cooks Illustrated that we used in the CrossFit Journal. And the variance was, it was subtle. It was pretty neat. You know, we had really good talent in Otto Lejeune.
Starting point is 01:09:03 He's the guy that first drew Pinky. Oh. He said he couldn't, he he wouldn't that he'd ruin his reputation that he makes logos for serious business and that's no serious business would have a barfing clown and i'm like all right well fuck you then we'll find a different artist canadian asshole he came back and he goes okay i'll do it and my wife though she wants to do colorize it she wants to put the colors in and i go you bet when they were done i go you geniuses mad geniuses perfect i got my vomiting clown but he's the same one that walked us down that font path and i do believe that the layout of the early journals is gorgeous uh We have a little bit of an emergency here. I apologize for the interruption to the show.
Starting point is 01:09:48 A golf foxtrot Yankee. Can you ask Greg his thoughts on C4? That's an energy drink. While I stand on the edge of a three-story building waiting. Don't do it. Don't do it. Greg, what do you think about energy drinks? I don't.
Starting point is 01:10:07 I don't have an important opinion. Okay, fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Greg, when you had those first clients, were you initially tracking everything that was happening with them as you were putting in the inputs and giving them the workouts? Were you documenting that that whole time,
Starting point is 01:10:24 which then started to become the collection for you to be able to extract the definition of crossfit out of that or i had i had carb files and on every client and when they'd come in i would require of the trainer to document everything you did and what the results were and we regularly made computations on that we were doing 11 uh site expensive stainless steel skinfold caliper body fat testing and sending people out for lipid profiles and doing all that shit getting them hydrostatically weighed annually all that shit and pretty soon it turned into all that shit and less and less training. And, you know, you think of that line a mile long and you're going, wow, they don't have pancreatic cancer and they're leaving.
Starting point is 01:11:15 You could slow down the whole effort by trying to prove to those that don't want to see that it's actually working. And I had a couple of physicians. One was a doctor. What's the nice doctor in Santa Cruz? Bernberg? I can't remember. Bruce is his first name. But anyways, Eisendorf, I believe. Someone will remember from the days. But he came by and looked through our, see, this was interesting. One of his nurses was talking about cholesterol.
Starting point is 01:11:53 And I showed her some triglyceride changes and things from people who had taken blood lipids. And she said, if my doctor had seen this, he would be in here talking to you. And I go, what's his name? And she said, I think it was Bruce Eisendorf. And I said, well, trip on this. It is Bruce Eisendorf's patient. And so he did appear in my office the next day. And I put a, I left him with about two feet of peer-reviewed material to read and showed him what we were doing and he became at once
Starting point is 01:12:25 convinced and then he later he's coming to me saying how do you get people to understand you know he's got the same problem i've just got i've got a convert of one in a doctor convinced that's part of how i met jim baker was who bruce eisendorf he was a patient how do you like that for tiring? Caller, thanks for being so patient. Go ahead. I had a question for Greg Glassman.
Starting point is 01:12:54 With Hiller coming out with his podcast and everything going on with CrossFit, is this where he thought it would be today when he started this years ago? Where CrossFit is today? Right.
Starting point is 01:13:13 With his, I guess, opinion of where the judges are, the coaching, all the YouTube videos coming out, showing all this coaching going on. I mean, these people are showing what they're doing. You know, the whole trajectory of where you thought CrossFit would be when you started it years ago. Yeah, I'm surprised and pleased with the extent of its success and spread without a doubt. And I hope it would maintain its health organizationally. But the magic happens at the local level. It happens at the box.
Starting point is 01:14:15 And it's that young man, young woman that's getting up at 4 a.m., having a high speed breakfast with caffeine and making their way to the box to unlock the door, flip on the lights and the music and, you know, double check the bathroom for cleanliness. It's that individual's relationship with the membership that is really the whole of this thing. And as you build up from there, what you do is you can just add on layers of distraction or destruction or annoyance, frankly. And that would include all SKUs, whether it's a bottle of water, a bar, a pair of shoes. skews, whether it's a bottle of water, a bar, a pair of shoes. You know, we, we, we, for the longest time, we're giving away our t-shirts. Give them away. And this is where I. Level ones or.
Starting point is 01:15:01 No, no, no, no, no, no. Kind of a pre-level one. Just, you know, CrossFit shirts. CrossFit box. Yeah. Yeah. a pre-level one just you know crossfit shirts across the box yeah yeah uh caller thank you i don't think there was any way though um that you could have predicted what happened just because you couldn't predicted the rise of google youtube cell phones right i mean there was this intersection all of humanity had with not just crossfit but that humanity's had with technology that's like changed everything yeah i use the example of curling you know that funny thing you do on the ice where you brush the ice and the thing goes down yeah you know i don't i don't know what brushing ice does and i didn't
Starting point is 01:15:40 know most of what i did would do and so I just put all my energy into providing availing a product and service that I would get in line for and is that enough who knows who knows but it did work and I've heard and I've read of of others that have had success in tech or business serial success uh articulate much the same kind of thoughts including including uh late mr jobs you know like when he was a kid he wanted a dick tracy fucking watch right right he put the world onto the path and now we all have them um so so uh so you get to 30 you get to 30 affiliates and at that point you're starting to think oh this thing's going to go to 100 affiliates like this thing's going to leap over the pond you You know, we got to a point, there was a constant effort.
Starting point is 01:16:47 Tony Budding is head of the affiliate program and his lovely assistant, Nicole Carroll. I couldn't convince Tony that his job was to be eyes, ears, support, to keep us all connected and not to tell them how to run their gyms because he was gifted with knowledge on a subject for which he had no experience. And I just, we couldn't do it. We couldn't do it. He knew everything they should do and why and how they should do it. And I didn't have that answer. And so that's when my sister came on, and we, you know, let's truly have affiliate support. Okay. And what year was that?
Starting point is 01:17:34 Do you remember? Yeah, well, that's first affiliate is 2001, so probably three or four. Do you remember looking in your bank account one day? It had been later than that. It had been later than that. It had been later than that. I don't know when Catholic came on. Do you remember looking in your bank account one day and there's, I don't know, $112,000 in there and you're like – all your bills are paid and you're like, holy fuck.
Starting point is 01:17:58 What the fuck is going on? I deliberately – Or did you just have your head down? didn't even know what and you were just grinding i deliberately flew close to the trees and so if a whole lot of money showed up we'd be getting a whole lot of things doing a whole lot of stuff like visiting affiliates buying equipment keep and keep the affiliate fees low keep Keep affiliate fees low. Yeah. Expand them when, you know, those grew when we had to. And never did we raise anyone's rate.
Starting point is 01:18:30 So there are people paying $500. I assume they've allowed that to continue. Paying $500 a year because that was their buy-in. You never raised a single affiliate's rate? Not once. But there had to have been a moment where, or maybe there wasn't a moment. There was never a moment when you were like,
Starting point is 01:18:51 oh shit, this is, did it take until you sold the business to where you were like, wow, I got on this thing and it was a fucking go-kart and I'm getting off now. It's a fucking uh international space i was skimming a fraction of a percent all along and at some point that turned into a considerable income but there wasn't an nba anywhere that didn't think i shouldn't have been um shouldn't have been in possession of hundreds of millions of dollars long before anyone thought my half of 1% was, was, you know,
Starting point is 01:19:30 people thought I was an asshole for buying an airplane. Brian Kelly thought I was a moron because it wasn't a G5. Right. But I'm not even talking about. He had a formula for it. There was a formula for the, for the G5 and not the King Air. Brian Kelly, by the way, was the guy who tried to buy the company from Greg through Greg's ex-wife and tried to use the legal system to do it. It was fucking nuts. But I'm not talking about the money. I'm even talking like I knew you when you were like, I remember there was a period where you're like, I'm going to meet every single affiliate owner.
Starting point is 01:20:05 And then like a month later, I see you at fucking four in the morning and I will come downstairs and you're like, dude. And you're like, what? Like, I'm not going to live long enough to meet every affiliate and you're tripping. So like, there's got to be moments like that where you're like, this, this thing is just exploding. Right. Do you, is, was there any moment where you were like holy shit or like where your dad's like hey i'm proud of you or like something happens where you're just like what the fuck just happened i was i was just at research park and i'm not i'm seeing in the in the daily receipts
Starting point is 01:20:38 um amount of money flow some flow through that succeed daily my life's earnings and the instant i didn't have was to be to throw a net out in front of that shit i didn't right and and if i were to do it again i probably would right. I probably would. If I had taken more money from the business, I could have sold it for a lot more than $200 million. And what people saw that got attracted to this thing, the thing that made the shitflies come around, was the fact that this thing, that HQ sat astride a multi-billion dollar empire
Starting point is 01:21:30 and pulled but 150 million a year from it. That's made no sense to the kids from Stanford. None. And so their thought was they're going to get their hands on this thing and then, and then, and then squeeze that out of it. But what it requires is that 15,000 of your affiliates stick around in
Starting point is 01:21:54 significant numbers, willing to be your point of presence, surrender their professionalization of the training space to be pinching shoes, all a footlocker and selling bullshit piss aid and calling it it's good for your fitness that's a hard sell and and what you're what you're selling what's being sold there is is reputation what you're selling is the brand is in spending it and uh i i don't think it's a win i can see if you said oh no you don't know what you're selling is the brand is in spending it and i don't think it's a win i can see if you
Starting point is 01:22:28 said oh no you don't know what you're talking about coach q2 q3 it's going to be big okay okay i got it i'm thinking year three year four because those are the very things that would cause me to leave but remember i built the thing that i would come and stay for. So I'm so self-referential. No one should take much of my opinion on this. But every affiliate that came around for the reasons that I would have come around, it probably at this point is, I would think, could be asking some of the hard questions. I'm here and they are. And I don't have an answer for that. Mr. Fall, a friend, he's got a tough position. That's a hard thing. It's a hard thing. There's no entity that doesn't want him to ring dollars from SKUs. Do you ever dream that you're still running the company?
Starting point is 01:23:21 You know, it's funny. In the asking of that, I was you remind i dreamed i was still a gymnast for 10 years afterwards where i'd be standing there with the gymnasts do this thing where they stand with the with the back of the hand to the hip uh-huh to keep the chalk off your clothes you know you don't stand with your hands on your hips you use the back of your hand oh yeah yeah yeah i've actually seen you stand like that i found myself myself in that. I spent 12 years standing around not rubbing chocolate over my dick. Holy shit. I didn't know that's why they did that. Wow.
Starting point is 01:23:55 Okay. It's a giveaway for a gym. And any CEO dreams? None. No. That wasn't an enjoyable thing for me hey uh and you know what i'm glad i was chased from the throne because i wasn't gonna walk away right and being chased i'm like really you know fine the the uh uh you know the phases of what really? You know? Fine. The phases
Starting point is 01:24:27 of what denial, acceptance, all that, that was a 30-minute deal. The whole run. The car ride home and you went through all the stages. You're good. I'm like, Maggie, what would life be like with $200 million? You process that quickly. I worry about money all the time.
Starting point is 01:24:52 Not my money, not the company's money, but fluctuations in the business dynamic that made no sense of employees in some positions. of employees in some positions. Greg, this is from RB. Has Greg watched the turtle races at the brewery in Coeur d'Alene, Plywood Oval Track, Dollar Off Beers? I would totally go to that.
Starting point is 01:25:22 Me too. Where is that? Have you heard of that? you find that caleb turtle races in quarter lane i'm headed up there in september i can't i'll go to that yeah we'll go to that yeah have you heard of it you know what let me tell you where the games came from i said any anything you can you can, you can compete and race. And they said, what do you mean? I said, let me show you.
Starting point is 01:25:51 I'll do this out at your ranch, Davey. Oh, shit. There it is. The tap house. Right? If you can measure it, you can have competitions. You can have races. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:26:08 What's that? You know, that's like a turtle net. What would be cool, Greg, to train turtles to what? We should train turtles and drug them. Find out what the games people are on. Oh, sure.
Starting point is 01:26:24 Have them push sleds and shit and bring them down there have some like maybe even do some hybrid t-shirt right yeah but it looks like one of those red ear turtles but look at his legs you know hey um uh greg this is an interesting question if i came to quarter lane would you are you interested in making any content together like letting people see what you're doing with your life or is that shit private i think i think that's what we're doing here yeah okay hey you know i said i love the that you know we get to hang and talk and this is how you make your living and we used to hang and talk and this is how you make your living and we used to hang and talk like this
Starting point is 01:27:07 and it's how you made your living and I think there's more independence here I think what you're doing is more important I think it would be more fun I mean I would have thought that Danny Bowflex would be like a low point for you and your ambition
Starting point is 01:27:22 as a filmmaker I hated that shit would be like a low point for you and your ambition as a filmmaker. I hated that shit like I can't even fucking tell you. That was me taking your business advice and running with it, giving people opportunities. It was good. I liked that kid too. You should have made some footage around his chronic virginity.
Starting point is 01:27:49 Yes, his virginity. We made a little bit. We had epics going, I'll fix that problem. There's some behind the scenes. You don't even have to show anything. anything look he's going to go in a version he comes out other
Starting point is 01:28:09 and you see what's different inputs and outputs hey I'm headed I'm headed off to tennis that was an easy 90 minutes thank you you guys are great all your fans are wonderful all the kind words I'm headed off to tennis. Quick, that was an easy 90 minutes. Thank you. You guys are great. All your fans are wonderful.
Starting point is 01:28:28 All the kind words are cool. Everyone just keep doing what you're doing because you're the strongest force for health that we've seen in modern times. Thank you. Yeah, CrossFit coaches CrossFitters, the CrossFit coaches in hygiene, you know, not shitting where you're making dinner
Starting point is 01:28:51 and going to the CrossFit gym are probably about 80% of what could have been done or has been done. And I'm going to throw the docs a bone. Thank you for your antibiotics and trauma surgery. Rambler, we will.
Starting point is 01:29:07 Good on the right. Kinetic, genetic, microbial. Mm hmm. Next week, Greg, we'll be back on. We will pick up where we left off about Greg's opinions on semen retention. I'm sorry we didn't get your question today. All right, everyone. Greg, we'll talk to you soon buddy love you thanks for always doing this
Starting point is 01:29:28 makes my day happy birthday oh shit yeah happy birthday Greg Glassman holy shit I was panicking like today's show like what were we going to talk about I didn't even get to my notes that's good okay I was like waiting to see where you were going to go because I always have so many questions
Starting point is 01:29:44 that I could probably just keep going okay good yeah i wouldn't even know where to start i wanted to ask him about joe biden the biden corruption yeah i probably stayed on the crossfit thread do we don't have any more shows tonight nope okay uh it's your rest day um let me know if we have to schedule someone tonight any athletes david holy shit david's been getting soft i think david's been micro dosing mushrooms the compliments have been pouring out of them lately it's weird yeah it is weird maybe you had a near-death experience or something okay uh today i will be setting up my cameras for the first time and taking them on a full test run i'll be putting on my straps and everything i'll actually get dressed in my
Starting point is 01:30:32 behind the scenes gear i'm kind of excited oh maybe i should come today then so i can i can video that i'll do it again tomorrow okay we'll do it every day until the game yeah i need to. David Weed. Yeah, Wave died. That's good. Have you started walking around with that 14-pound weighted vest or the 8-pound weighted vest just to condition yourself for the cameras? Kind of.
Starting point is 01:30:56 Yesterday, I wore the 16-pound vest for an hour. Yeah. Yeah, I just wore it for an hour. I thought you were joking. No. I'm old. Okay, I'm going to for an hour. I thought you were joking. No. I'm old. Okay, I'm going to tennis.
Starting point is 01:31:08 Love you guys. Everyone, I wouldn't doubt it if there's a show tonight, but nothing's scheduled. Schedule this. Let's do that. I'll be home.

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