The Sevan Podcast - Is CrossFit HQ Phasing Out Sport? | Souza’s Show

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

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Welcome. We got a couple of things we're going to be talking about this afternoon. Tyler Watkins was nice enough to join us as I send him a text that probably one a.m. his time last night after I read his article that was in the barbell spin, the title of it was, Did CrossFit Fall Into the Bud Light in Jaguar Trap? So we got Tyler on here, we're gonna go a little bit further into that.

We're gonna talk a little bit about CrossFit culture, but, and listen, I know there's a million different shows that were on this already, but I think that Tyler and I are gonna give a million different shows that were on this already, but I think that Tyler and I are going to give you a different perspective on some of the changes that happened as far as the game season. And what exactly does that, those changes mean in terms of like a 30,000 foot view, right?

Like, what is that? What does it actually mean to affiliates? Uh, don't forget Gillette. Yeah. Thanks Mike. You know, Jenny, what's up? Jenny's been crushing it. Have you been watching her dense updates? Oh, they're so good. Uh, don't forget Gillette. Yeah. Thanks Mike. You know, Jenny, what's up?

Jenny's been crushing it. Have you been watching her dense updates? Oh, they're so good. I've, I've been watching them while I eat lunch and stuff. That it's like perfect. I'm like, got it. I already knew most of the stuff anyway, but I like her takes on stuff. So yeah, me too. It's funny because she lives obviously in a different time zone.

So a lot of those times I'm like up and getting stuff going. I could see that it just posted and I'll do the same. I'll throw it on and like catch up on all the news of stuff. Just leave me alone about IU. We sucked. I know. Leave me alone. Dang.

You getting commented. Uh, Lisa Gall. Happy belated birthday. Thank you very much. I appreciate, um, that Lisa, uh, glad you're here. Heidi with the crazy person eyes. Maybe she's referring to me. I don't know. We'll find out before we get into the article itself, though, let's, let's first react to everybody reacting.

Exactly. That's why I write these articles. I just want to watch people run around and scream a little. Yeah, it's hilarious. Susan, I'm going to go ahead and start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you.

I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you.

I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I just want to watch people run around and scream a little. Yeah, it's hilarious. Susan's energy is extra high today. That's right. You could always tell the difference like in sometimes when what it looks like prior to these shows and how much time I've had to like dig into some material before the show. And I was just telling Grace before this, I was like telling grace before this I was like now I know I either can prepare zero or I have to be like more prepared like I am prepared yeah there's no in between I know I I feel the same I've been I've been doing some of my own digging this morning and I'm also double doubles end up and and c4 it up so this should be a good one

I'm ready to rock and roll Alright, so let's dig in here first. The first person we're gonna Check out is gonna be Craig Richie's video still Craig Richie Freaking jacked I saw a picture of him Like without a shirt on he's shredded. He is he's always looked good, but he's like He seems like he's really dialed in now, huh? Yeah So he made this do you think his video got the most amount of views on the changes of the season? Yeah, probably 75,000 views or something. It's crazy. How much he pulls

Yeah, almost 80,000 views in the last five days Shut on him all day long, I guess, if you want, but dude's pulling. Dude can pull. So you guys could go check out this whole entire video for yourself. We're just going to play one little snippet here, and then Tyler and I will kind of comment on it. I'm curious to get your takes, Tyler. And here we go. Obviously there was a lot of comments too under the post saying that this new safety person will report to Dave Castro that doesn't seem safe and that this person should be independent of Dave Castro. I feel like this is just how it works in corporate world in terms of if Dave Castro is the lead CrossFit sports organization officer and he overlooks all of the CrossFit Games, the safety

person for the CrossFit Games has to report to him with their findings And ultimately it relies on Dave to be like we will implement these changes and that's just kind of how that will work You know, but I get that legitimate concern in the comments now the second thing. Okay, so it was just that snippet right there I want to make one thing clear. I think a lot of times Dave gets Kind of viewed as like he sits in this ivory tower and whatever he says, that's, that's the end of the buck when it comes to the CrossFit games. And that's wrong. So like I liked a lot of what Craig Richie said in his, um, video there, but the part about Dave, basically this new safety team referring to Dave and then Dave being the

almighty dictator, um, saying yay or nay on what the safety scene team is saying or suggesting he does kind of undermines, um, that whole thing. If the way that Craig presented it, because then basically saying like, yeah, there's this new safely implement, but they report to Dave and if Dave doesn't make the call with it, then essentially the buck still stops with Dave and Dave still in charge is what he seemed to be implying in that video. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I don't like if Dave veto something and something bad happens, it's Dave's head.

If some, if that person vetoed something and it fails and he never goes to Dave, it's that dude's head. It's a double accountability system. I don't hate that there's a safety administrator involved, but anyway, continue. Sorry. No, I mean, I, I agree with you too. I actually don't hate that either. And the fact that you're kind of kind of bring somebody else into have different eyes on it, give you different perspective and possibly run through a couple, um, dress rehearsals as far as a scenario goes, if some of an incident

does happen, like, I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. No, they, it, the, the real problem is that like, was this really not being done before? I, I just can't imagine that that was the case and that's the question that comes up, but yeah, this, this person being dedicated, it's like, uh, fine. Yeah. And I wondered too, if what we're seeing happen with, uh, whoever was in charge of safety, cause like you made just a comment, like we don't have access to the information of how that works, but imagine they already, I imagine they

already have somebody in place for that too. So now you removed that person that potentially has been working in that position for a long time at the games, knows the athletes, knows all the people, knows the inner working of the games, has a lot of experience out on the competition floor with in terms of safety and you're going to replace them by bringing in a potential third party person that doesn't have that experience, but might have a more robust like safety plan than the other person or something like that. So I, I bet, I bet it works in reverse.

I bet that this was decentralized to a degree and everybody looked across safety. And then I would guarantee you there were safety meetings that happened, or it was a part of a meeting where they just focused on the safety aspect of stuff and they all shot out their thoughts. And now that's going to be accumulated into one person guarantee those meetings still happen I bet there was not one central person and I bet that they centralized it into one person fine no big deal and whoever that was who might have been like the safety safeties are they're probably going to be elevated at this point I think I would imagine they take that person they

just bump them yeah and just to conclude that point that Craig had made about Dave still being kind of in charge of the whole entire thing, even though they're bringing in this new safety thing, I want to make it clear that that always stops and ends with the CEO of the company. So if you run it up the chain enough, like Dave doesn't have power over Don. So to frame it in the way that he did of like, Hey, they're putting in this new safety person, but nothing's actually changed because Dave's still in charge and at the helm of everything is wrong. Dawn is definitely that person.

And I do think that, like you said, Tyler, I do think we'll see some changes come with a new person being brought in. Yeah. Um, whether or not it's going to be good or dysregulated to the safest on earth. We'll, you know, to find out. Okay. This next one, um, comes from here is going to come from John Woolley. If you guys watched, uh, his take on this whole entire thing, CrossFit's master plan

revealed, um, I was talking about with Tyler before we got on, I actually thought this was a really good breakdown of everything that was happening. Yeah. I think I texted you guys and was like that he, he did a good job. I think he put his, his input in a little bit as we all do. And I disagree with some of his input, but overall it was a good summary. Yeah, I think so too. And in terms of like length, right? Like nine minutes, like we've all done different comprehensive looks at this,

but in terms of best bang for your, Like nine minutes, like we've all done different comprehensive looks at this, but in terms of best bang for your, your time, this is it because nine minutes at 1.5 speed, you could knock this out in like four minutes and, uh, and have a bunch of information. Um, okay. So I got it queued up at this one part here, just for some context. John is making the claim that a quarter finals has been replaced with the community cup and the community cup.

And the community cup now allows everybody who participates in the open to go to like a next stage of competition. And he's basically saying that that's just a way for them to build a hedge against any possible loss in money from people not showing, not signing up this year in the loss in money from quarterfinals. So what's your thoughts on that? people not showing a, not signing up this year in the loss and money from quarterfinals. Um, so what's your thoughts on that? He will it function in that way?

Yes. Is that the true spirit behind the intent of which they rolled this out? I don't think so. And that's, that's part of this where I'm like, you framed this in a negative light. I was like, I did not. He's like, they all, it made it sound like in the way that he said it, they only did this to mitigate cashflow. And I was like, I, I cannot, that seems rather pessimistic to me.

Okay. Um, I want to play this clip and then I'll give you my thoughts on that Tyler, but that's kind of the context of the clip. Um, so when we pick up here, John is kind of finishing his thoughts on the community cup. And then he says something interesting about, um, what the funding for the prize purse is going to look like in a potential kickback for affiliates. And this is going to lead us nicely into the article that Tyler wrote, because I think all of this wraps up into like, are we seeing a change in the tide in CrossFit's messaging, um, to start to steer culture back to the base as we like to say.

All right. So we'll let, uh, John, John speak here and then we'll give our inputs on everyone qualifies for the community cup. That means you have an additional 258,000 people eligible to compete in the community cup. Now let's just assume for a second, they decide not to charge 50 bucks ahead for that. They want to charge 40 bucks ahead for that. At 40 bucks ahead, that's an additional $10.3 million available for them to earn, which brings their total to $15.5 million. That's an increase potentially

year over year in $4 million of eligible dollars. If only half of the people compete in the community cup, they will absolutely earn more money through the open year over year. So basically what they've done is they built in this buffer to eliminate any financial loss and drop-offs while reducing expenses and putting 100% of the ownership and hardship, by the way, back on the affiliates. Now it should be noted that on yesterday's affiliate town hall, Dave Castro announced that the open is going to fund prize money and that a large amount of that money will be worked back into affiliates in the open.

Now this part was pretty vague, probably intentionally vague, and it appears as if they haven't worked out the details yet, But this is something affiliates have been asking for for some time. So I would assume that this is going to be well received by affiliates, but we don't really have the full details yet. So more on that. I think when you put all of this together, though, it paints a picture of a much, much bigger plan. This entire game season is designed to be dependent on being driven by affiliates and partners, which puts less pressure both financially and from a workload capacity across the headquarters itself or the games team,

however you want to view it. When you tie that together with the way it was announced, both in conjunction with the investigation news and the incompleteness or the vagueness of the information given to us, it tells me what I think their next step is. Here it is. The intention of private equity is to sell this business.

We've all known that for some time. What they plan to do is make it more profitable and sellable by reducing the footprint of the business while increasing the overall profitability. The business world is called rightsizing. In order to do that, they need to do is make it more profitable and sellable by reducing the footprint of the business while increasing the overall profitability. The business world is called right sizing. In order to do that, they need to follow the same playbook in the future that you saw happen here this week. I would imagine sometime around the new year, you're going to see headquarters come forward

with another significant affiliate fee increase. What that would do is drive off any of the perceived low value affiliates while driving more revenue from the affiliates that are deeply invested and loyal to the brand. This will improve quality control in the affiliate model and it allows future buyers to be more confident that they aren't buying a madhouse. They'll quickly. All right. So a couple of things to unpack there.

First, let's start with the community cup. Um, Tyler, so the way that he framed it there, you were saying was kind of negative, meaning like it's more or less a money grab, um, is the way John framed it, you think that there's something more to that. What more do you think is wrapped up in that? To me, and this is maybe this is me being naive or whatever, but I would feel like they're trying to build a model. Because they have to sell this to somebody. And any good company is going to do an investigation not only on the financials of the thing, but, what does it look like in the future? What's the sentiment from the community? All of these

things. So they need to build something that matters and is going to last a test of some sort of time. Right. Right. Now, so they're coming up with a product in which they can give back to the community. They can still integrate the community. I understand that standpoint. And so I think it comes from a good hearted position. Now, do I think the Affiliate Cup is going to do what they think it's going to do? Will it give them revenue dollars? Yes. Will it be productive and last a test of time? No. Do you remember the team series that lasted like two seasons? Because people just didn't care. People, And this is my pushback on this stuff is people don't want to pay to just

participate in something they, they want to earn where they're going. Right. Yeah. I think, I think it, I think both things are actually true. I do think that to what you're saying, this community cup provides more opportunity across the board for everybody who wants to play to be able to play, go on to that next stage of competition. It's over a weekend. So it makes it a little bit more like, let's say intense or serious, or you know, you could, you could run at your affiliate, you could run the whole weekend just around this one

community cup event if you want it to really lean into it. Right. Um, and so that's what you're saying. It's more so like bringing it back to the CrossFit community and then making it more about competition across the leaderboard for everybody that wants to participate inside of a CrossFit gym. Sorry, one second. Keep going. And uh, so I think that it's, I think both things are true. I think that that does give more opportunity to the affiliates to kind of run their show if they want to really lean into the community cup portion of it. But I also do think that it hedges their bets. And I don't think that that's a negative thing either.

Um, but it does, it does hedge their bets against the fact that they're not going to have that money coming in from a quarter finals that they typically would get coming in from quarter finals, especially when they made that increase from like whatever it was 10% to 25%. I mean, there was probably a big chunk of change that came in, came in from quarterfinals, especially when they made that increase from like whatever it was 10% to 25%. I mean, there was probably a big chunk of change that came in, came in from that. And I don't think they just want to walk away from that. Um, but I do think that they were thoughtful about it because there's lots of different ways that they could have hedged their bets against

creating more money in the open. But they chose to do it in a way that seems to include the affiliates more, seems to include the CrossFit community as a total more. And so you're saying like, if we were going to put a percentage split on it, just making it up, they're like 51%. We want to bring this back to the affiliates and create more value inside the community. 49% were hedging our financial bets against lot drop off in the open. Yeah, I would, I would, I would say that ratio is high on the hedging your bets option,

but I don't think you're wrong. Yeah. Okay, cool. So maybe like a 70 30. Yeah, dude, I need to have you on more often. Check this out. I got Bill here. I got Brian spin here. We got chase here. Holy shit. I got you brought all the frickin big names. Even keeping it real showed up. Damn. All right. I'm just gonna and I didn't even put your name in the title. I've actually I've actually put no names of guests I've ever had on in the title. You want to hear a secret? What it's because I'm going to do that. And then one day it just has some big fish.

It's going to be rich and I talking simply about his very, very earliest training days and like when I already got this plotted out my man, mine, I'm going to go deep into like, all right, rich. So I found this clip of him working out Nike freeze, him and Darren in this, uh, like it must've been on Darren's property or something. It's a barn that is not very well seen and they're doing a workout together. I'm going to start it with that video. And I'm going to be like, here's what we're going to talk about the step you made from that to the first pair of Reeboks that you got paid to put on your feet. I want to know about what your training looked like. Anyways, so eventually we'll get it there. Magnus is here too.

Thank you, bro. Appreciate it. Bill Grunler, what was the percentage of people that actually came into quarterfinals spin? Oh, see they're talking 69%. That's where spins at. Nice. Ask him how ask him how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he would consume on the daily basis. If you cross

it was just peanut but no sandwich. It was just peanut butter and jelly like a freaking Neanderthal. The mix dude if you cross fitted between 2012 and 2014 and you did not drink whole milk and eat peanut butter mixed with the jelly like you weren't really competing for crap Oh, I I I had a tub of tub aware or a tub aware of peanut butter and jelly man How I rocked dude? Yeah, I did that way too much Yeah

Exactly if you weren't just if you were getting a peanut butter jelly mix right from the jar and milk from a dispenser this see I knew this show would bring out all you fucking nerds that the milk nobody Spencer Looked like it slapped so hard like it looks so good. Dude after I work out like that by the way to It's it's been kind of funny Like it would be embarrassing if rich found out now that like I you know I've developed this like relationship dare even say a friendship with him your friends. We're buddies It would be embarrassing if he found out how many times I watched the day in the life of him

I like, you know, i've seen it probably over 20 times dude like 30 times like he walks into my room Grace just said I shouldn't bring that up publicly It's just tyler and i on here and 185 of our closest friends No one knows It's just Tyler and I on here and 185 of our closest friends. Oh No one knows Like he walks in and he's like, hey, I'm here to work out with you And he's like, why do you have all these posters of me in your gym? This is fucking weird Okay, rich. All right, so Now I want to bring the conversation

Okay, so we talked a little bit about the community cup and I agree with you Tyler I do think John was still accurate in his assessment, but I do think that it was framed a little bit as that, that was negative, whether that was John's intent or not, we don't, we don't actually know that. Um, but I still think he's correct. So it might be 70%. They're wanting to give back to the community and really invest into how they could get more people involved.

And kind of extend their time in the open or extend their time in the community competition, um, and at the same time, still be able to make enough money off of it to make it worthwhile and hedge their bets against the loss of the quarterfinal. So we're kind of in agreements there. Now, as we move into the next portion, he said two interesting things. Number one, he said that it reduces CrossFit's footprint size in it, and it, um, puts it back on more or less the affiliates in kind of potential outside, uh, events to kind of carry the competition. Um, how do you feel about that in relationship to the conversation we're going to dive into in terms of like, is that a good reset for culture?

Is that a bad thing? Is that a negative thing that it's going to be offloaded to affiliates into potentially camps and, uh, you know, different sanctions like Wilson and, um, Dylan and what those guys got going on or does that actually help it? What Greg tried to do in 2018 was the business model that would be successful if you don't want to outlay a lot of cash. And it is, it is where they should have gone. I've always thought the model would have worked had it been doled out differently. They sort of just brute force in the style

that Greg does, just brute force, put it on everybody. And it got wild because of that. Now in the sentiment of creating the community, and I think I'll hit on this more later, is I think we're, it's funny because it's like we want to talk about divorcing the sport from the methodology and the community, but like they're, I think they do lean on the sport a little too heavy into driving community. And so I think it'll create great events again. I hear that CrossFit's being bombarded with requests of of sanctional events. This is a good sign. They're gonna get franchising or whatever kind of dollars, licensing dollars for that. That's great for us.

It'll allow them to do more stuff on the community side. But CrossFit at a community level has to have these these shows of who we are. They have to have these meetings where it's like we talk about what CrossFit is and why it's great. Regional served in a little bit of that aspect, but I don't think it was the full potential of what could be. So anyway, to answer your question, I guess. Yes and no, it will help the community out, but not in a direct sense.

Yeah. Does that make sense? I know I wandered around that a little bit, but I think it does because the way that I view it and we've talked about this a little bit when we talked about crash or like the future of competitions and like the NorCal classic and stuff like that, I honestly think that the more that CrossFit just says, hey, we have these set standards CrossFit set, set it up here, like mandate some certain standards, mandate a certain amount of experience that you have to have running the event.

There's probably a bunch of other parameters that I'm just unaware of because I'm not in that programming. Yeah. Programming, all that type of stuff. Right. So let's just say like you have kind of these like a qualifying things that to mark. If you mark all of those, then yeah, you could become a licensed, sanctional and, uh, punch somebody's ticket to the games. I think that that is the smarter play. I think that, um, somebody else said, Oh, Crossfad, it was again here said Hunter, uh, has only one has only done one sport that has died. Well, he wasn't him that said it. Oh, right here.

It was Sean. Sean said, um, Hunter says CrossFit's dying. And I think from somebody outside looking in would probably think that like, if you look at inside looking in, it's like, you're not wrong to a degree, to a degree. Cause I mean, if you, if you just look about everybody's stations, like YouTube stations and stuff like After the games and stuff we get this weird like hangover time and a lol Yeah, and it's almost coinciding with affiliates in terms of membership lol like that last quarter of the of the year

You're you know, you're a person December. It's slow and a lot of people are like Oh, we're gonna ramp back up in January. And you know, the new me, new you type thing. So I think that, uh, I think that, um, uh, we also see that across the space in total, but I think that it's not dead in the sense that it can't be revived. I think about it in terms of pruning a tree. Like sometimes you have to go down there and just cut everything down So when you walk outside and you're like that used to be a bush that was growing like crazy now

It's just a stick and you're like, yeah, but when it grows back, it's gonna be tighter. It's gonna be better It's gonna be healthier. And so I think that's what we're seeing happen with a crossfit right now is that there's gonna be this kind of like reduction or pruning back of a lot of the stuff that that has started to grow out of their control, especially in terms of expenditures and it looks like it's dying, but it's not before we leave this sport mode. Also remember the word revive that that that's going to be important here in a little bit. But, um, I was thinking about through the mechanisms of like any change that they need to implement right now. And it goes this way in like the federal budget, right?

Every cut they're make, you're going to make, we've been over bloated in the federal budget for decades. Everything they're going to do is going to hurt. So nothing that CrossFit does right now is going to feel good in the, in, in the short term. Yep. That's a great point. And to bring that even into like an affiliate level, if you start, if you

make some big, uh, change, like let's say, okay, you're like, Hey, if somebody hasn't been to the gym and, uh, three months, all these people that have been in the gym in three months, like let's reach out to them, I guess what happens when you reach out, you're going to have a lot of high churn, you have a lot of people that are canceled that'll be like, Oh, you're right. Yeah. Hey, thanks for reaching out. I wanted to cancel that.

Right. And, um, uh, when you implement something new like that, or if you send an email list and you haven't sent it in a while and you, you send a mass email out to everybody, you're going to have the highest churn, but those types of things are important to go through that phase. So you could really get it back down and then build back out better and make it stronger. And so I think that's what we're, we're seeing CrossFit go through right now as they're making certain calls. It's really, it's, it's resulting in high churn. And I think in order for them to continue down the path of rebuilding its culture, it's going to have to continue to make hard calls. And guess what? It's going to have to continue

to alienate certain people. And a lot of times people get afraid when they say that because they're thinking like discrimination or like, like, no, no, no, no, no no it's not about that at all CrossFit's always been for everybody but it's just or for anybody anybody but it's not for everybody right and we let everybody in for a minute yeah exactly and then you got to see if it's if it's well it's just like running an affiliate i can never remember who said this but they they said 10% of your members caused 90% of the problems. And you appreciate them as a member and they might be wild to have to deal with. But that conversation to get rid of them still sucks. Like even though you know they cause all the problems and you know you might lose four people because you have to cut this one person,

it ends up being better in the long run that you got rid of that person. Yep. And an example of that too, which, um, to just piggyback off what you said, Tyler, like if you've been an affiliate owner around for long enough, you have experienced a situation where you have a coach that's in there, that's coaching a lot, maybe the majority of the hours, they start to have conflict with the way you are running things. They think they could run things, things better. They go over and they find another gym or they're going to go open their own gym or whatever. So then they leave. And when they leave, they reach out to a bunch of the members and they say, Hey, I'm going over here. You guys should go and come with me. And six months, they

come all back. Right. Not a lot of people go. The person who is the coach, they're going to like they've really like, you know, cultivated these relationships in the sense that people are going to leave their gym, leave their community and follow them somewhere else. And typically that doesn't happen as much as they would think. So to bring that analogy home here, I think we have the athletes that are like, we're going over here and I'm joining high rocks now and I'm not going to identify as a cross fit or whatever the fuck their problem is and So they go ahead and do that and then they look behind them and they're at the new gym going like wait

Why didn't all the members that I I thought loved me not jump over here and it's like dude you abandoned Their community and went to go start something new and so like you you have that happen as an affiliate on right now And I think CrossFit as a total is Experiencing that into your point out or having that first conversation with that coach and being like, Hey, if you think you could go do it better than obviously we need to part ways and you need to go over here and then you do that conversation, you have to deal with that drama and it feels like the weight of the world. But like you said, six months later, you're like, Oh shit, that didn't even matter.

All those people are still here and we're way better off without that individual, um, coaching anymore. I was talking to an affiliate owner buddy of mine yesterday and he bought the affiliate not long after I had lived in that place and he said we've been gone maybe three years now. He was like the first two years sucked. He was like it was a lot of like pruning of people, pruning of members. He was like but we're in a really good place now. He was like, it was a lot of like pruning of people, pruning of members. He was like, but we're in a really good place now. He said, but it, that first two years sucked. Cause he was like,

I was trying to build a culture that, that I want. And he was like, and then I think it's valuable to people. He was like, it didn't make it easy, but it made it worth it eventually. Yeah, that's right. And uh, Judy hit it right ahead. Then you regret not having the hard conversation earlier. A hundred slow fire fast. that's right. And, uh, Judy hit it rather than you regret not having the hard conversation earlier, a hundred percent. That's dude. And it's, I had a conversation. This was a few months back when I was out in, um, uh, out Portsmouth, Ohio.

And I was talking to an affiliate owner and they were kind of like bringing up a lot of these issues and stuff like that. And I was like, it kind of just seemed like they were beating around the bush. And I was like, Hey, what's the number one thing that you think about or stress about at dinner table when you guys sit down and start talking about the gym? What's that conversation? Take me there real quick. And both of them kind of like looked at each other like, okay, so we have this

one coach and they started going down the path and I was like, Hey, all that shit that we just talked about for the last 15 minutes, none of that matters. And they're like, well, what about more? Remember I said, you got to cut that coach out. And I had had this conversation with, um, chase and bill when I was on their show. And I said, if you always start with this, like, Hey, Tyler, can we have a conversation? Yeah. Hey dude, first and foremost, I want to let you know that I failed you as a leader.

I wasn't able to communicate the culture and transmit exactly what I wanted to happen in this building. This isn't your fault. This is my failure as a leader here. And unfortunately, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then you go into the conversation. I got to fix the problem. And you have a problem, dog. But whenever you get down to that, it really comes down to like, yeah, there's probably one person or a group of things or one thing that you

need to change. And you're resisting changing it because you know it's going to be hard. It's like dumping that bad girlfriend exactly cross fat. Exactly. And so which brings us to this point, and then we will circle back to the ending comments that Wooly had. But right now we're gonna get into this article that Tyler wrote here. And I really liked this article a lot. And he used two case studies of Bud Light, Jaguar,

I think you mentioned Ford and stuff like that. So just kind of the 30,000 foot view on this article here, Tyler. What kind of inspired you to write this? And then where'd you kind of dig in to start to put the pieces of the puzzle together? So I saw what CrossFit was doing. And then it reminded me, the Jaguar thing had just happened. And I was thinking about it. And I was watching all these people freak out. And I noticed because I did not like the rebrand, I liked the original branding of Jaguar. And then I just watched, I just do a lot of people watching.

And people were freaking out and it reminded me of Bud Light. And then I started thinking about Bud Light, Ford and Carhartt. And I was like, this is a thing that's working its way through business ecosystems right now. Hey, reach out for everyone. You want to get as many people to use your product as possible, which is true, but you can't overlook. So like with Camel, right? Camel had the cigarettes. They had a certain culture. They had a certain aesthetic and they they catered to a certain amount of people and After decades people started smoking their cigarettes not because they love cigarettes

They knew they would kill you but because it was cool right And so Bud Light had to retract all that and walk back towards being cool. And then later in the article, I make an example of 90s grunge and the Appalachian country music that's happening right now. And I'm like, the reason that this is popular is because these were cultures that existed and became cool before they came, became big. And so you have to, we have to walk away from this. Our thing is for everyone. And you have to worry about what you are as a culture first. And you could actually see this in like this whole entire,

like, especially in the United States, like this ideology, ideological war. I'm guessing you're looking at this here. Asked that. Yeah. The original title was very different. What was the original title? The original title was burn it down cross and spin was like, I suck it at like SEO

sort of optimization. And I was like, it's been, was like, what do you think? And I was like, I trust you change it if you want. And he, so he changed it to this and I thought, I thought it was good. It was like, I trust you change it if you want. And he, so he changed it to this. And I thought, I thought it was good. We, I was kind of going for a click baity thing. Yeah. And sort of like working off the back of like all the talk

that's going on right now. But then I wanted to deliver something of value at the end. So. Yeah, it was good. And I thought the, like how you made the, the thing between like the Appalachian artists, like Oliver Anthony, obviously is the big standout case because that dude made that song, Richmond up by Richmond

or whatever. And I mean, that thing just exploded. Bye Lisa. Have a great day. I mean, this is a big, a big conversation being from Kentucky, being from Appalachia, like that there are record companies that go out there now. It's the middle of fucking nowhere. But they're looking for people who are in that culture

and you can't reproduce it in Nashville. You can't reproduce it somewhere else because it's sort of born there and it's stood in that shit forever. It lived that life. You can't make that. That's right. And the authenticity that came out from it

is what catapulted Oliver Anthony to just like instant fame, right? Like he made that song. I don't know exactly the timeline, but the next thing you know, he's sitting there talking to Rogan about it. I mean, to make a leap from that, I think he was playing at his county fair or something that year prior, and there was like a handful of people that weren't even really paying attention and then fucking the next year he's on Rogan. It's because he's saying something real. That's right. And that's exactly what I was gonna say and he he's he's he's being in that We use the word real or authentic or different thing like that. But what he's actually doing is he's speaking about the reality behind him There's not a sugar coating of it. There's not a rounding of the corner There's not a changing it or framing it so So that way it's acceptable or it sounds softer. It sounds better. Like he's just giving you the raw.

This is the reality that I live. And, and here's, you know, here's who I am and here's what we do. And I think you're actually seeing this almost in a religious sense where like they were talking about, and especially, uh, Andrew Tate was a big pusher of like becoming Muslim. And the reason why is because they were like, this is the way we do shit. And we don't bend our standard for anybody. Right.

And there was an attractiveness to this because with majority of the other religions with Christianity and other stuff, you started to see this like almost too tolerant of everything. And when you become too tolerant and you don't stand for anything, you stand for nothing or you'll fall. You want to live by the sword. You got to die by it too, man. It's not, it's not a costless bet that you're making.

Um, so I said, focus on the word revive. Someone, someone said to me, like, there's an opportunity in crossfit for a revival. And, and like, what would I do to make CrossFit as cool as it was? Or how can we, where are we missing on what, what made it cool in the beginning? I started thinking about revival. I grew up in, in church. I've, I've been all, particularly Southern Baptist, but hell, I've been to Presbyterian. I've been to Church of God, I've been to Seventh-day Adventist, I've been all over the place. And revivals are always a big deal, man. People like that tie-in of coming back to church and getting re- antiquated with God.

And I started listening to Greg this morning, like looking for some of that inspiration of what made us great in the past. And I, I re stumbled on, um, CrossFit is church. I don't know if you guys have seen that video. It is worth watching. Is that me at Harvard? He was at Harvard. It was the Divinity school at Harvard.

And he talks about all the ways in which CrossFit services you in the same way that church services you. It fulfills you in a bunch of different aspects in which church does the same. They were talking about the community, the personal accountability, all that stuff. I was like, these are the things. My thing is that CrossFit is not standing on anything outside of the sport. And that's why they're, yep, they're sort of to, to piggyback off of Hunter. They are dying because they're not representing anything but the sport at the moment, even though they're

like talking about the community. And so to a degree, we have to walk back and anyway, that's sort of where my brain is around right now at the moment. Yeah. And I'm in agreement with it because as soon as we started here, and you said this in the article here, like how does this relate to CrossFit? Since it's still in private equity, CrossFit has focused on broadening its appeal. And so we know that broadening its appeal means losing what makes it unique. Because people, things that make individuals unique, hate it or love it, those are trademarks that make that individual unique.

There's certain things in which behavior is in culture that makes that culture unique. And a lot of those times the things that make it unique repel people or push people away from it too. And so when you start to drop those to broaden your audience at the hope of being more inclusive, then what ends up happening is you have nothing attractive anymore. And you're trying to pander to the lowest common denominator. It's not that we were ever exclusive,

but we had our tenants that we stuck to. And if you didn't agree with them, that's fine. You don't have to come to our gyms. And, you know, I look at this from an accounting standpoint of like, okay, we lived and died by those laurels back in 2012 through 18. And then we got private equity involved and they've been doing these new initiatives to broaden scope and broaden appeal. And we're not seeing a return, we're seeing the opposite. And it's like, okay, like just from a business aspect,

didn't work, your initiative did not work. So what were they doing correctly that you're not doing correctly, right? and I think that when people um And I hate this argument too, by the way, this will be a slight rant digression which were Right here. But a lot of times you start to hear this whole entire fucking shit at the end of like Oh, these guys are just want the old bad back. Oh, these last been made mistakes too. And you're like, no shit, bro. Have the comments in the, in, on the article or art of that, dude, it drives me

insane because you're like, yes, I know. But there was also explosive growth in a very unique culture that was able to even pop out into mainstream because we got made fun of by all these different things because there was a Uniqueness to what we were doing as Crossfitters. We were as hated as we were loved exactly in That to me just meant that you were evoking something you were noticed you were being seen you're being loud about it, right? In the the whole thing is like people always just keep going back to that whole like the passing it's like Guess what? I can't fucking move time backwards, but we can make decisions We could sequence things better

We could be in temple about how we move forward and there's lessons from the past that absolutely apply to today And to throw the whole entire thing out and call it racism colonialism Which is the same shit they're doing with ideology in the US, right? All of a sudden you can't fucking talk about making anything great again because they're going to bring up, well, you remember when it's like, yeah, well no shit. But there was some really great things. There was an American dream back then. There was a dream with CrossFit

back then as well, too. So yeah, mistakes were fucking made. Of course, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It It's like it's just saying I bring up this example all the time. Okay, then don't listen to Freaking what's his name? The? Beat it the song Michael Michael Jackson stop listening to Michael Jackson then nobody does you know why because his music's fucking amazing Yeah, you're gonna to keep listening to him. And it's just one of those situations where it's frustrating because, you know, and I know you hear it too, Tyler, I get like plugged in this like negative club and like somebody made a comment on there was two comments I

I want to bring up, but somebody had made a comment like, oh, these guys are like upset. It's like when you you find the band that's underground and then they make it mainstream and then you wish it was underground again. It's like, what are you talking about, dude? It was, it was larger and more gold, dude. It was larger and it was a global brand that was thriving back in 2013, 2014 that we didn't all say like, oh, the band blew up and we're all upset. Now we were happy for it because we knew we we're gonna affect and change more people's lives and

We need to be able to start to prune stuff back and here's how we do that I there was this comment on here that kind of sparked this conversation here And I didn't reply back and this has nothing to do with this. I'm sure she buried. She's very nice But I thought this was great because she wrote, okay, so this was about something on covering CrossFit. As long as there's a type of money CrossFit offers for the CrossFit Games to win, basically the prize first, I just wish it was those for whom are paying members to a CrossFit boxes. The boxes CrossFit should be supporting and making them a priority. Want to participate in a CrossFit boxes, the boxes CrossFit should be supporting and making them a priority,

want to participate in a CrossFit event, be a CrossFit member. So essentially saying like, if you're not inside of an affiliate, you can't compete at the CrossFit Games, you can't compete at the CrossFit Open, you can't compete with anything with the name CrossFit on it. So then, squat jerk, squat the jerk, Connie, again, nothing with her, probably very nice lady, put not every city and town in the world has an affiliate. jerk, um, squat the jerk Connie, again, nothing with her, probably very nice lady. Um, but not every city in town in the world has an affiliate. So while it seems like a good idea, it would keep those who don't have access to a, it would keep out those who don't have access to a box.

Here's exactly how you draw a line in the sand. Me. Oh, there's Connie. Me. Why would that matter? Right. And so, Oh, hi, Connie. We're using it matter? Right. And so, oh hi Connie We're using as an example right now, but it's not gonna roast the shit out of you. Don't worry about it

Yeah, no, no, I'm not So she asked like what what would happen for those who don't have access to a box and I put why would that matter? Be in this is how I feel that you draw the line You just say it It doesn't need to matter if you're gonna say this is how I feel that you draw the line. You just say, it doesn't need to matter. If you're gonna say this is our culture, this is us as CrossFitters to celebrate an art event, you have to be part of our thing.

And I just don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, because I put why would that matter? She put, I guess I'm only thinking about those very remote cases where they don't live within a reasonable distance to an affiliate. CrossFit, if I remember correctly, a reasonable distance to an affiliate. Crossfit, if I remember correctly, didn't start as an affiliate sport. It didn't start with people. It didn't. Didn't it start with people doing.com workouts that Greg posted online for anyone.

I do think, however, if you live within a reasonable distance to an affiliate, that it should be mandatory for you to be a member in order to participate in the game. Just a thought. And so this is exactly where I think we need to change the thought process because thank you for the material, Connie. I appreciate it. That is exactly right. So she is correct. CrossFit was started so it was accessible and free to anybody who took the time to read,

learn, and then do period. And I completely agree that it should always remain that way. It should always be accessible. It should always be free. And if you have internet access, you could get on there, you could read the thing, you could start to do it, you could learn the material, heaven forbid, you could even start to train people a little bit. Right? But when it comes to the sport of CrossFit, we don't need to have that same exact approach. The approach that I need to have is, fuck you. You're paying a member an affiliate and you have to prove it or you don't join the open.

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And even if and then guess what? As an affiliate now, if you live in some remote place or whatever, you don't have access to it. Well, tough fucking shit. I really wanted to play ice hockey and there wasn't an ice skating ring around me because I live in fucking the Bay Area. I wanted to play basketball, but I was born this way. I want to be president of the United States, but I don't live close enough. Right.

So like the point being is that that doesn't matter. Tough shit. Life's unfair. And for affiliates now, if I have a couple of garage people that live in my area that are like, damn, I wanted to compete in the open. I could come up with a open pass. I could sell it for $30 a class. They buy this pass.

And again, it contributes to me now for that period of time, they're a member of the gym, they're paying. It's actually a good business model, right? Shout out. We got it across a little more. If you guys want to come down here of the gym. They're paying. It's actually a good business model. Right? Shout out. We got it across a little more if you guys want to come down here in the area. Do you want to go somewhere? I wanted to circle back around to what we're missing that we had.

And yeah, please go ahead. Moving forward. So the, I felt a little guilty. The intent of the article was to just talk about the issue and make the comparison. But I did feel a need to say, okay, here's what was good and what we're not doing. And one of the immediate examples for me was something like CrossFit is Church, examples for me was something like CrossFit is Church or the big, which I poked around on the internet forever. I could not find where Greg talks about the can't be bought. I can't find the talk where he talks about the NSEA or Coca-Cola. So I feel like those are gone to a degree. But I was like, those were so important.

So tell me if you feel this way as an affiliate owner. Training people for health in their life is a fulfilling venture. But I think at 10 years, maybe sooner, it will start to become not enough. And the thing that we had 10 years ago was Greg was saying, I'm going to use your affiliate dollars to engage in a war on health. We are being suppressed in this, this, and this way. And it was fulfilling knowing,

and it was motivating for me as an affiliate member, just a member of the community, that like I was engaged in this thing that was trying to do that. And we don't have anything like that. We don't have anybody saying boldly that this is the best thing that there is for your health. Orange theory, they can all suck it. This is so much better for you.

And this is why. And Greg was able to communicate that in a savvy Often like jovial sense, but he meant it and you could tell he was passionate about it and we don't have these You know as a community, we don't have these YouTube videos click up I remember every time that CrossFit would post something I was watching it immediately every time that CrossFit would post something, I was watching it immediately. We don't do that as a community now because nobody's saying anything that is like authentic and truly genuine. And we don't feel rallied behind this organizing force that we're, we're

all paying our affiliate fees to. And sometimes when they're highlighting different stories that they want to touch on it, it feels a little contrived Yeah, it does it feels like it's forced. It feels almost like they're like, okay, we have to But let's make a video on yeah this because we need it like it doesn't really feel as if like the Objective there is just to grow the message. It feels like the objective is to, is to prove that they're doing something. Um, and I think we, and the reason why I think that we see that a little bit too is it's a lot of the same recycled people they use. It's like the in crowd, right? So it's like, if you're sitting on the affiliate counselor, if you're Craig

Howard or if it was Zia or Zara, like, sorry, I didn't mean to mispronounce your name on purpose, but, um, if you're like one of those people that are like on the inside, it's like, okay, now we're going to go highlight your stories. But I mean, look at the people that won the affiliate video contest, CrossFit Santiago out in Chile, right? CrossFit, um, X-Ray in Taiwan. Like you're never ever going to reach any of those stories or do anything. If there's not, um, some sort of. Number one, strong vision and message coming out.

And number two, the ability to like pull all of that stuff in. Right. Uh, and you can't do that being reactive. Like that's a proactive approach to another point about the in crowd. We don't know anything about anyone who works at CrossFit right now, but. Get back in the day, you would get these, Scotts Valley, you would get these videos of HQ. And I remember like every time,

like Rich running around the building and all that stuff, I remember being like, what's it look like where they were? But you would meet, like we knew Rory, because they would do content just with Rory at the office. They would do content with these people. We don't know. And they seem like a more scary force because we don't know any of you.

That's right. We can't absorb anything you're saying because we don't know you. So the whole point of this was like, what are the functional items? Like, how does CrossFit get back to the culture that, I don't even wanna say that we had, but how can we move the stone forward and develop an actual culture? I think we know probably what it should be is that CrossFit's the greatest training methodology

that's ever existed and that we need to go fight these fights. But how, they can't say any of that right now. Don can't come out tomorrow and be like, guess what, guys? War's back on. We're going back at Coke. Everybody's going to be like, all right, whatever, bro. So it's like he has to start building back

into that situation. How do you do that? And I got a couple of different ideas, in terms of culture, like actual action items. Number one, take a strong position. That's a mandatory culture. You have to take a strong position. Okay. Number two, you need some sort of mission behind that position. You have to say, here's the problem. We are the solution. You guys have probably heard this in a million different ways, but it needs to be continued continuously, continuously. And the biggest thing that shows that the work needs to be done is everybody who

started CrossFit in the last four years referred to as a, as a sport. Like my members know that if you use the S word in the gym, I'm about to, I'm about to get off, I'm about to get all fired up, you know what I mean? So, um, number one, strong position. Number two, a mission. Number three, enemies. You need to create enemies intentionally and purposeful. Right?

Hey guys, it's us versus them. Us with our solution versus them. The creators of the problem. It's us, the truth, in terms of strength and conditioning, fitness and nutrition, and it's them, the corruption. Okay, so you have to have some sort of enemy, and this is why I'm stoked to be doing more and more stuff with Broken Science and Metfix,

because if you look at the first two things, strong position, hell yeah, they have a strong position, a mission. Yeah, they got a mission. Uh, enemies. Oh yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then the last one I have on here is alliances.

You're going to create enemies, create alliances. And all these things need to be intentional. You need to sit down and say, guys, who are we? What are we trying to accomplish? Who are the people that are going to be standing in our way? What are the alliances that we could kind of lean on to partner up to continue to move this mission forward? Here's a great, like could be implemented immediately. CrossFit does, and like after talking with Chase at, on his podcast, we talked about like how a lot of people,

or I won't say a lot of people, but people at HQ, the ratio of people who are actually doing CrossFit on a daily basis has gone way down. It used to be 100%, so it's gonna go down. But that everybody who worked at HQ previously were believers in the methodology. And they were believers in the vision, right? Yeah. And so you could in the vision, right? Yeah.

And so you could actually do content on like, Don brings everybody together at HQ. And they sort of need to lean into this, everything Barstool is doing, they're doing 100% correctly. They're going through the moon right now because they produce content from the office and half of the stuff that I watch of them are them at the office.

So Don brings everybody into a room. Hey, guys, guess what? It's revival week. We're going to talk about what we're getting ready to do. And we sort of need to pay penance for the sins that we've committed over the past couple of years. We screwed the pooch, but we're going to fix it. Here's what we're here for.

We cure diabetes. We cure type 2 diabetes. Here's what we're here for. We cure diabetes. We cure type 2 diabetes. That's what we do. We solve all these other issues. How is our vision implementing change with that? And you just talk to the people who work at HQ. What have you learned? What were you doing incorrectly? Like, just be brutally honest about what's happening. I think that would go a long way into, oh, the affiliate members see that you are being honest with yourself because I don't think that right now that they have a true idea of what their vision and mission is, right? They may have some corporate, like, this is our

mission, vision, values and all that stuff, but they don't really know. And so you have to go to town with yourself and say, okay, let me focus up on this. What are we doing? What are we doing? And that has to start with them first. And if you communicate that out to the affiliates, they'll be on board immediately. They'll see it as, and I'm sorry, you won't even have to say I'm sorry, but they'll see it as in you're doing the work internally and that makes me feel better. Yeah. And it's funny because we've had a couple of, um, different things where Dawn has, has, uh, talk or spoke.

And we've yet to see these just like heavy hitter derivatives posted on Instagram from that. And so what I mean by that is like Greg would give a lecture at some random gym, whatever. And there would be inside that lecture, two to three, just killer 30 second little sound bites that you would pull from that, that you would listen, that just fired people up. And I think that, um, that's something that the current leadership is really lacking. And now whether that just comes from the fact that like what you said, that they don't even really kind of have their hands wrapped around who they are or what they are or what the culture is, or there's other constraints and things at play that's inhibiting them from taking these

strong stances that we're just not aware of. Well, and ultimately I, I am rather pragmatic about they work for P E and there's only so much you can do in that situation. They're not, they're not trying to step on toes. They're not trying to start wars. And that's the problem that I have with this is essentially you run, you do run a religion. It serves in every facet as a religion. You don't pray to it. You don't do that stuff, but it, it checks all the other boxes that religion checks. And they can't run this like a t-shirt

company because it's not one. Right. You bought a weird company. Yep. And so stop trying to run it like every other burger joint that you've ever run. It's not going to function that way. Yeah. You can't look at it as a widgets. You know what I mean? Like you can't be like, Hey, how many widgets do we need to sell and just replace the word rigid widget with CrossFit because it's a whole different entity. Um, I think, uh, Matthew, thanks for joining the show, bro. Um, also to thank you for the, uh, shirts I, I wore it on one of the kill Taylor ones. Um, appreciate you sending out there, bro. That's awesome. Uh, won't ever be fixed with private equity. And that's kind of the statement that you're making Tyler is like, it, it's

tough with a company that's, that's like Berkshire partners who are like, Hey, we don't really want to create that much of a mess here. We just want to make a few dollars and move on. But who knows? Because we have heard rumblings of they're not selling for a while, they really want to invest in this, that type of stuff. So we don't really fully know their plans. Okay, let me go through a couple of these comments real quick, and then we'll kind of wrap this thing together.

And the last show I did about the CFO, there was only one comment and the comment said, Susan has a strong weave. And I appreciated the hell out of that one comment after the show left just kept me going. Vicky HQ haven't created the emotional investment and connection that is an affiliate. So there's no symbiotic relationship between the two. I need to send a couple people that that clip of Bruce Lee about emotional content. Damn, something that's very hard to do.

It is it is. But when you when you do that, when you could play on that emotion, you could find if you could tap into something to give people, to motivate them to action, it works really well. Connie, by the way, Connie, thank you for letting me use your comments. As you could see that there is no ill intent there. I was just using it to illustrate a point. Connie, prerequisites at HQ or sit on the board is to be a person who does crossfit and believes in the method methodology build it back

Completely agree with that as well, too I don't think they need to be some star-studded crossfitter by any means But if you are not practicing what we preach, how could you really understand what it is? You're selling how could you really understand what it is? You're supporting. Go ahead. I was watching, uh, Peter Santonella or something like that. He, he goes to like, he he's been to Appalachia a bunch of times. He goes to like kind of weird communities. Um, and he just interviews the people that live there and actually live the life there because like, it'll be some communities that you don't know a whole lot about.

And he went to the Pacific Northwest. He was somewhere up in Oregon or something like that. I think maybe Washington and, um, he was interviewing an old logger and he was talking about the sort of the structure in the logging community at the time. And the guy was like, he was like, as far as logging goes, how is it positioned now as it has been in the past? And the guy was like, it's the best it's ever been because all of the companies that run the logging in the past. And the guy was like, it's the best it's ever been because all of the companies that run the logging in the Pacific Northwest are privately owned. They don't have to worry about dollars.

They need to make some sort of cut, but at the end of the day, as long as they're running semi profitably, they're okay. They don't have to take more trees than they need to. They don't have to put people in danger because at the end of the day, they're just trying to run a business that turns a profit and creates jobs. Yep. And sustains over a longer period of time. Right.

And sometimes, um, building a lasting business means that you will sacrifice dollars, like I can't tell you how many times I've had like a longer member that might have to be gone for a period of time or just wasn't like fell out of the habit because of some life event, job change, schedule change kid. And they're like, Hey, I've been in a couple of months. Like I need to cancel my membership. And then I write back to him. I'm like, Hey, no problem.

I went ahead and cancel it. But I also loaded you up with a 10 pack punch card because I know you didn't make it in last month and I want you to have an easier transition to come back into the gym. So what do I do? I eat the cost on that. I give it to them for free. Some, in some cases I'll refund the membership if they're like, if I know the situation, right.

And I don't have to do any of that. And if I was just focused on my profitability or my bottom line, I wouldn't do any of that, but I could tell you now being an affiliate for the last 11 shit, 11 years, um, being an affiliate for an 11 years, all of that comes back in 10 full might not be from that member of coming back and utilizing it, but the more you're investing in people, I promise all that stuff comes back and it's really fucking hard to do. I mean, I can tell you when I was like broke as a joke, living on my parents, I was trying

to make this affiliate work and it's like, yeah, I made a hundred bucks profit this month. And someone's like, Oh, I had to cancel. And I did this and I had them like, Oh, no problem. I'm like, there goes my a hundred bucks. Um, the gains lab, uh, was the war on soda a good business decision? Yes, it was because it took a strong position. It was, it was, it wasn't about soda. It was about the corruption in the stranglehold over soda dollars had on

the exercise sciences in nutrition. So make that clear. It wasn't like Greg was walking around being like, we want sodas off the shelves. Like he didn't give a shit. If you drink or did soda, he just wanted that money and that corruption out of the sciences. That's all his, his whole deal was. Um, and yes, I think that was a very great, uh, business decision.

Calculated. It was super calculated. It was super calculated too. And, uh, I hope, uh, you know, that guy, um, what is it? Mason startup. Yep. He's reached out and we had a couple of conversations about like NSCA stuff. And I hope he makes a real comprehensive, uh, video on that.

Cause he's pretty good about those breakdowns and that I think might, if he ends up doing that, that would end up shedding some light to what most people, um, think was a war on soda, but it was, it wasn't. I w I want to say this regarding the science and soda, all that. I think as a community, we should be upset with ourselves. Um, and this is something that I think HQ should push is we've been around for 20 plus years now and we have not produced much in the way of science. We've said that we quantify, we're the first to quantify fitness, but we've not done much

with it on the science level. And in a time where science is held so high, we should be able to look at people and say, this is how, numerically, how we solve type two diabetes. Yeah. No, I'm... And Greg did a little bit of that. He was involved with doctors.

He was involved with science, but we never made quite a deal about it as I thought we should have. And I agree with you with that. And I actually got in trouble because when I went to one of the DDCs, that's what I was doing was going there because I knew that the awesome stuff was going on. We need to pull that out of the shadows into the light. And I took a YouTube video that they had made and I recorded it to audio and then I uploaded it as a podcast. It was a Seema Holtra's lecture and they called me and they were like, hey, were you secretly recording it?

Why the hell do you have this recording? And I was like, no, I just recorded your YouTube station and gave you guys credit, but it needs to be an audio for them. And they were like no I just recorded your YouTube station and gave you guys credit But it needs to be an audio for them and they were like oh Okay Sevan Greg Rand so far out ahead of the community in blaze the trail for us and that is completely true like Hugh Greg now like just now everything I feel like it's starting to creep up to where Just now, everything I feel like is starting to creep up to where, um, Greg was 20 years ago and the shittiest thing, and I mean, life's life, right? But like, can you imagine if Greg

wasn't canceled, how big Greg would have been through that COVID time, like him as his own personal brand and how big CrossFit could have been through that time? Because holy shit, dude, he just would have fricking beat the drum and just hammered all that public health bullshit that was coming out and It would have been crazy. But uh, yeah Well, I just wanted to say like that's the thing right now that we're not capitalizing capitalizing on is like There's all this talk about health and science and blah blah blah blah. It's like dude What have we done with the fact that people are addicted to social media and it's making people sick What have we done with the fact that people are fat like we've not done anything

We've not gone out and said hey, we have the fucking fix for this We've stopped all that and it's like this is the biggest public health moment in Probably history and we're not capitalizing on it. Yep, and Here's Again, just a plug this here. Um, uh, Meredith, she gave me this at the games. I still got it back there. Nice. Yes, I do. Um, uh, Meredith, I always, I had always hoped that the original CrossFit

health team was going to conduct that research and provide that data. Here's the cool thing. That whole entire team, almost down to every person that was a part of it, is now with Broken Science. And they're doing exactly that. They're going to start quantifying a ton of this data. They're going to start utilizing a lot of that to prove certain things. I've got my hands on some of the material with the Metfix seminar as far as the nutrition side. It's going to be awesome. Like CrossFit should utilize all of that. They should repost it. They should use that as a freaking rally cry for everybody. And Greg said it. That's why he said a couple shows back when people were asking like, is Metfix or

broken science, the competitor to CrossFit. And he was like, no, I'm going into a lane and Emily's going into a lane that CrossFit will not, and in some cases cannot go into. And that's why, that's why for me, it was like the writing was on the wall. It's like, okay, so we get further and further involved in that. So hopefully I could kind of bridge that gap from like the publishing company that is broken science and all that high level intellectual stuff that they do and help disseminate that via seminars via other coaches and everything else.

And I think that the relationship between broken science, Metfix and CrossFit should be one that should be symbiotic because I do think we're all after all the same mission. We're just coming at it from different angles and the stuff that they're doing about broken science and what Greg and Emily are doing, like CrossFit would never touch that with the 10 foot pole. Not only do they not have the intellectual power to do so, but they don't want that fight. And so that's why I think that there's a nice synergy between the two. So Meredith, there is, there is hope there.

I would just say it's a couple more of these and then we'll just close the loop on the article in the, um, wooly thing here. Um, I'm just trying to say through seven, uh, we went from rich froning, HQ claiming we were tied to diabetes. Um, statins are bad in Jay, but Acharya speaking at HQ to what? Um, the CrossFit health guys kind of saying something. Um, yeah. And I, and again, that's why I think there could be some, uh, a nice synergy

between the mission that is going on over broken science and what's happening a little bit with the CrossFit stuff. Yeah. Well, the, the ums don't get you fired up. That was the joke that I was making there. Somebody else said CrossFit rogue should own CrossFit rogue has no, no care to do that. I don't think they're going to venture into that lane. Jar Jar Binks.

Welcome to the show. How does CrossFit police this? Isn't this money left on the table for the education department? I looked at what they were saying. They were talking about coaches coaching without level ones or expired L ones. I don't know that coaches should have L ones. But good coaches are good coaches. Yeah, good coaches are good coaches. Yeah, good coaches are good coaches.

And here's the thing too, like the L1 is a great start and should definitely be something that everybody does, but it is 100, like look, I'm doing some research for movements. And this is one stack of books that I'm like going through to like start to do this research process. By the way, not a popular book, but Overcoming Gravity by Stephen Lowe is probably one of the most comprehensive

books you'll get on gymnastics and strain training. So, yeah, the L1 is a start. It's not a finish line. Will you guys think Greg will even ever consider buying CrossFit Brack? No. I don't think there's a chance. Go ahead. Sorry, I wanted to add to that. I was thinking about that. Can anybody at HQ currently get out in front of the camera and be as charismatic as Greg

and say the things that he was saying. And that's a tough pull. I do think Chase could actually fill that role. I think he has all the pieces to do it, but besides him, it's gonna be tough. But CrossFit has to grow outside of Greg. You have to be able to fill those roles. That's the same thing with the sports side and like Dave's going to have to walk away at some point and we can't, the sport just can't dry up because Greg's not, or Dave's

not there. Like you have to be able to pick up these, these, uh, these torches and run with them. Yeah. You know, it's funny too. I, I hadn't ever really like put much thought into that, but I agree with your choice on chase there. He's, cause he's, he's really good at navigating like sticky situations. Like when I'm on his show and say crazy shit, right?

He's polite. Yeah. Tall. He's good looking. He makes good jokes and he, he can carry on a conversation forever, but most importantly, he will hold firm and what he believes and he'll navigate around the conversation that you're having with him. That is a rare combination of things. Yeah, it is. And I was telling him on the show that you guys that you're on with them, that conversation towards the end, similar to kind of what we're talking about now, was

great. And I had even message Chase, I was like, dude, you're a G because the way you were able to kind of like navigate that conversation, still won't affirm what he believed in, but not necessarily like make it in a negative tone or feel like he's pushing a back against CrossFit in any negative way. But just was like, yeah, we recognize like these things definitely could be better. We still have some of this stuff here. And like, I hope my hope is we do X, right? And so to have somebody that has that ability, especially with the knowledge base that he

has, I mean, coach, affiliate owner, high level athlete, announcer, like, you know what I mean? Like he's he's filled each role and that's super important. Whoever you're putting out in front of the audience there. All right. If CrossFit isn't reaching out to the make America healthy again movement, then what are they even doing? If you guys don't know the relationship that Greg and Emily have with RFK, you should really look into that. Because let's just say like Emily, Greg, and the Broken Science crew are on a first name basis with G5 pilots. If you get the analogy there. It was a movement now at best it's a church at Greg's ability to stay focused on the North star, um, can never happen without a cult leader.

Agreed. Okay. So to wrap this thing up here, um, the last thing that John Woolley had mentioned was the thing about raising affiliate fees again. And uh, what do you think about that? Tyler, have you heard anybody talk about affiliate fees? I mean, just in the media. Um, I wouldn't be surprised.

I, I don't know if it's a good move or a bad move. I I've not considered it fully. What do you think? Um, yeah, I mean, I, I don't know what's going to happen. I think eventually they're going to raise the affiliate fees before they sell it again. I just don't know when. I said this the first time is that they're just essentially choosing their customer. It's just a filter. Like you put another filter up and you're gonna drop off half of the affiliates as like what we call passion projects, people that have full-time jobs and shit and families but are also still

trying to run an affiliate. You'll start to see all those drop off over time. And I don't know, maybe their hope, like maybe that is their intention. I would, it would be crazy if they announced that in January because that just happened like a year ago. So to double back down and raise another $1,500. I don't see that happening this year

but I could definitely see that coming up. It'll happen around the games. Yeah. I would say it'll happen. If it happens this year, It'll happen around the games. Yeah, I would say it'll happen. If it happens this year, it'll happen around the games. Yeah. And, um, uh, tomorrow he will announce that they're going to lower affiliate fees. Uh, I'd be curious to ask every single affiliate owner what other why. And here's the thing, Vicky.

I think a lot of affiliate owners that, oh, Chase is saying about the affiliate feed, not any discussions I've had. Okay. So there you go with that. The why is what a lot of affiliate owners with Vicki now are struggling with because without having that like strong position, a mission, a vision, and feeling that the work that you're doing every single day in your gym is part of this really big movement that's making a very positive impact globally. Like without those elements, you really start to question why you're up at 5 a.m. every morning rolling up the doors, dealing with all this stress, not making a ton of money doing it.

Without that emotional pull to it, without that like, I'm committed to this because it's, you know, it's something I live and breathe. You're going to have a lot of affiliates. And then if you double down and be like, Hey, by the way, pay me more money. People want to be part of something larger and people undervalue that and creating this this vision of something larger and CrossFit's wholly responsible for creating that narrative. That's right. And, um, it's also grows the ecosystem.

And so if they're not the ones at the helm growing the pie, but just growing their slice of the pie, pretty soon, there ain't going to be no more pie for anybody to eat. And I love pie. So in conclusion, I think we gave a lot of meat on the bone in terms of like how we, you would reverse culture. Some of the things that, uh, we gave some great suggestions on doing, um, whether or not they got the chops to do it, who knows? Um, I don't know anything else to wrap that up there, uh, Tyler.

Well, I ended the article with CrossFit's best days aren't behind their, their in front if we can make the steps and they're gonna be hard steps like I was talking with the budget earlier it's not gonna feel good probably at first but that's part of being a freaking adult man you got to make the hard calls and they are hard hard all right one last piece I'm gonna plug to two things here. Number one, I'm going to plug this here. If you guys haven't already, go on down to Vindicate and get your ugly sweaters.

Christmas sweaters. We got the CEO. We got the no rep. You got the no lifty, no gifty. So if you guys are headed to a ugly Christmas sweater party, support one of your favorite media personalities. Hashtag don't call us influencers. So we got that and then one thing that I will be doing, this will be on the school platform here. Let's see if I can time this up right. Tentatively, it's looking to be somewhere around the 19th, 20th of December on the school platform. It'll be free for anybody that wants to sign up. This is what it looks like in camera, but I'm creating this, uh, suck less in 2025. This is going to be a framework that I've, uh, developed here that'll hopefully help

all of you guys buckets of life. You got the buckets of death. What about the buckets of life? Um, be a little bit more intentional on your actions as an affiliate owner, as a coach sick of being fucking broke. Yeah, me too. So, um, I put this thing together. We're going to be doing kind of this, uh, roundtable discussion about it.

Um, if you're a coach, if you're an affiliate owner, or if you're just somebody who's interested in being a little bit more intentional about your actions, about what your goals are, about how to sequence those goals, about actually facing reality, about doing the fucking math behind the goals. You know how many people pay something up and I'm like, what's the math behind that? What's the what's the fucking how much does that cost? How much months will that take? What would that take to outsource? And they're like, so don't worry about it. Yeah, don't worry. Or you face the reality and then you ask him like, have you set a date for that? What's realistic? So anyways, my hope is I've been running that system.

I do it also in this binder where I kind of keep it together for each year and I keep them all stacked together. I've done it for the last five years. It's a framework that I didn't develop, but it's a combination of things that I've used. My hope is, is that once we lay out that framework, you guys could take that, you guys could plug in what's important to you as a coach as an affiliate owner or just as a human being trying to be better than you were last year and Hopefully you could use some of it to help you out

So again, if you guys want to do to go to school comm a backslash media launch You could sign up for free there. You guys will see it on the calendar. You could join it. It'll be a zoom call That's all I got to say about that that okay coffee wads and pods after this I Don't know what time he starts. What's math? Don't worry. I will take you there. I like that Connie will see you there be intentional on purpose Nice Kim Template canvas canva template. Yeah, I saw the chalkboard one and uh, that was I like that one. That's a good one. That was approachable. Yeah. So if you guys want to chat about that and come join, please do so. Tyler. Thank you, dude. I appreciate you writing great articles being so invested in this CrossFit community as you are. But more importantly, coming on this show when I ask you if you want to jump on and talk about random stuff in the middle of the night.

So, um, and as always remember, don't do anal thing you take from this. Yeah. There's one thing at the end CrossFit HQ. I know you guys are listening. You got a shot there. Listen to what Tyler says. Adios everybody. Have a great, uh, have a great day. Pedro is live now.

We'll see you over at coffee wads and pods. Be good to each other out there. Adios.