The Sevan Podcast - Private Equity, Rats & Crunchy Moms | Ep. 2

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

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Introducing TD Insurance for Business, with customized coverage options for your business. Because at TD Insurance, we understand that your business is unique, so your business insurance should be too. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. Hello everybody, welcome to episode two of the show with no name. Thank you guys for bearing with me as I kind of kept moving the show out. It's supposed to be at 11. It will normally be at 11, but this early morning,

I was down at the Station 6 in Hayward Fire Station working with the recruits in the academy down there. So I had all the bigwigs there too, Fire Chief and everybody else watching me. So anyhow, that ended up taking just a tad bit longer than I had expected, and I wanted to give myself enough time to get here back in front of you guys and prepared for the show. So thank you so much for hanging on as I shifted it a little bit. And today, we have some interesting stuff.

We're going to be talking about private equity. We're going to be talking about rats and AI, and we're going to be talking about crunchy moms. Crunchy moms. and AI and we're going to be talking about crunchy moms crunchy moms I guess this it's okay Susan we're still here thank you and I appreciate you for it I saw you guys had some comments on Tuesday I think my show might be the only show I'm sure Sevan will probably do some that needed to fill in but for the part, it's going to be us on a Tuesday. I was looking through a couple other things. What is a crunchy mom?

Eric Wise, I'm here for the crunchy mom talk. All right, we'll start with that. Although Sleeky gave it away. Can't wait to talk crunchy moms with Sousa. He's a certified expert. Damn right. Damn right. He's a certified expert.

Damn right. Damn right. I guess, Asuza, can you explain why the rat had balls? Yes, I can. Yes, I can. Jason Tyler Watkins, CEO of the Heat One app. Zoomer, MILF equals crunchy. Could be. I don't know.

I don't know. Mike, aka Pool Boy. You don't know. Uh, Mike, uh, AKA pool boy. Y'all know him. A private equity. Frank, Frank probably has an election, uh, uh, an election, an erection for this title is probably what you meant. Yeah. You're probably right.

Um, Susan, what's up from X? Hey, it's Susan. You put Susan, you're Louie. We got it all sorted out. Everybody kind of screwed it up there. Yeah, so we're going to talk crunchy moms. What is a crunchy mom? Well, don't you guys? Wait, we're going to get right into it here. So, dang. Pull boy. Typo, damn it. Yeah. Kind of messed it up. Okay, so check this out. So this was new to me.

I had never heard of what a crunchy mom was ever, or even the saying at all. And I was scrolling through the gram, finding some good content for this show, and this popped up. And I thought that I would share it with you guys. And we'll go over what a crunchy mom is. Of course, this is my whole identity. I'm a crunchy mom. Of course, people

think it's weird. I care about my health, but I think it's weirder that you don't. I'm a crunchy mom. Of course, I put butter in my coffee and people think it's weird, but I think it's weird. They use inflammatory ingredients right away in the morning in their coffee. I'm a crunchy mom. Of course, when I walk by the stickers on the back of the car that say 13.1, I think of the insert, not the race. I'm a crunchy mom. Of course, I wouldn't buy conventional milk. I'm a crunchy mom. Of course, when I walk by the stickers on the back of the car that say 13.1, I think of the insert, not the race. I'm a crunchy mom. Of course, I wouldn't buy conventional milk. I'm a crunchy mom. Of course, this is my whole identity. There you go. Crunchy mom. Sleeky is also a crunchy mom. So what is a crunchy mom? And maybe you should become a crunchy mom.

maybe you should become a crunchy mom. Crunchy mom definition given to us here. Have you guys seen the new generative AI with Google now? Where you type it and you search it. Instead of bringing up search, it also tells you about it ahead of time. Kind of strange. Definition of crunchy mom. A crunchy mom is a slang term for a mother or caregiver who uses a natural lifestyle in their parenting. The term crunchy mom is typically used to describe a mother or female caregiver who typically follows a natural lifestyle and incorporates it into their parenting. A crunchy mom attempts to avoid modern medicine, limits reliance on technology and eats only organic foods. You a crunchy mom? Did you just get a new label? I think we should all. Tyler Watkins, so I was right, does equal milk. Well, in that particular example, it did. But usually people who take care of themselves and are health-focused

usually tend to look a little bit better, right? They're more put together, more responsible. usually tend to look a little bit better, right? They're more put together, more responsible. 12 daily doses. We have a lot of those where I am. Where are you? Where are you? Now that we know what a crutchy mom is, can you please explain why people like milfs? We'll save that for next week. I'll give the breakdown. Okay. So we have a couple of cool topics to talk about. Of course, I'm going to be bringing you guys an article from Broke It Science, hence the weird-looking rat thing at the beginning.

But before we get into that, now that I've enlightened you guys with what a crunchy mom is, already adding value to your lives. Oh, totally doses Boston. You know what's interesting, though? Is there going to be a weird line between a crunchy mom and then somebody who also is woke? Is that the same person? Can they be the same person? I don't know. I don't know. of course, I think those videos are dumb as fuck. So Corey, interesting story. When I saw that, and I've seen people do that trend before, like, I'm a whatever, of course I, right? And then my mind immediately went to like doing one in San Francisco. And then being like, I'm a fentanyl

addict. Of course, I'm breaking into your car and like show somebody breaking into your car. I'm a fentanyl addict. Of course, I live in a tent. And then finish off the last one with, I'm a fentanyl addict. Of course I shit in the street and just like show the different clips. I don't know. I thought that that might be a funny take on it. The San Francisco version, right? Yeah, of course. I guess, of course I'm'm shitting in the street. Just show them like, oh, sad. Sad, sad, sad. But the great part about California is our fearless leader, Gavin Newsom, going to be president if we're lucky enough. You know what I mean? Have you guys seen the Bill Maher with um patrick bet david

or julian michaels i know i know as crossfitters we're like we're julian michaels haters right because of all the stuff she says about crossfit but you guys might change your tune a little bit if you watch her on bill maher's uh podcast um especially the patrick david bet david one it's interesting because he's like gavin newsom winner that guy's a winner and then when patrick pushes him and is like yeah what result do you like the best what do you think he's done the best of he of course came up with nothing um which is kind of funny uh philip kelly julian michaels when i saw it yeah see that? She, she put it to him for sure. Um, Tyler Watkins, CEO of the heat one app toilets are a conspiracy propped up by big sanitation. Obviously Matt Burns, uh, PBD took over. Yeah, he did. I also too, I don't like the whole entire,

if you're going to have a guest like Patrick by David on or anybody, we're going to have that level of conversation. There's very few people who could like spark up a joint and still keep the conversation at that level. Like maybe just Joe Rogan, because the second, uh, Bill started taking a couple of hits. Like he was like,

he turned down and it, from that point forward, he, he couldn't really bring up any good points. He wasn't really, he wasn't really quick. It wasn't really quick witted. So I want to talk,

um, a little bit about Philip Kelly. Julia Michaels talked about Ozempic too. I didn't watch that much of it. I should definitely go back and watch the whole thing. But the first section I did watch, she was great. Oh, before we get into private equity, which I know we've talked about this before. Heaven knows Frank's talked about it in some of his stuff, but I found a really great YouTube channel called, if I can remember, How Money Works. So the YouTube channel is called How Money Works. And he made this video just on what private equity is and what they do. And I've just pulled a couple nuggets out of there that I wanted just to share with you guys, because I think if we really understand the intentions of private equity as a whole,

maybe not specifically Berkshire partners, but if we know what the goal of private equity is at the whole and how they typically operate, we could predict CrossFit's next moves, right? We could kind of understand, okay, they're going to do this because it's going to give them this, and this is why they would do this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But before we get into this private equity stuff, I wanted to talk a little bit about leadership, not hopefully in a lame way, but we're going to bring up our friend here, Bill Meyer, one more time. up our friend here, Bill Meyer, one more time. And you know what, shoot. I thought I had written down who this was, but apparently I don't have it together.

So if you guys recognize this woman here from the bit, put it in the comments and we know. Here we go. I know you're friends with Newsome. Yeah. We live here, right? Oh yes. We live in, right? Oh, yes. We live in California.

I was born here. In Oakland, they have Kaiser Hospital, where my pediatrician was. The hospital put out a notice last week. Employees are not to leave for lunch. It's too dangerous. Right. Not only that, I have the Lawrence Livermore Lab right up the street from the gym. They fly people in all the time. They

stopped using Oakland Airport because of the amount of people that got robbed getting into their rental car and leaving the airport, by the way. They don't fly in people to Oakland anymore. So I know what she's talking about. In downtown Oakland, that's on him. I don't want to hear that the homeless problem is intractable. You want to be CEO? It's your problem. It's your death. I know you like him, but I just think I can't imagine him being, having the gall to run, to lead this country when he's run this state into the ground. We just had Governor Brown not that long ago. Oakland was safe. Things were going on.

It's not good. It's not. He looks very shiny. He does look shiny. Like he's put together. Like he's got the hair and like, you know, he looks the part for sure. Like, oh, he's a stand-up guy. He's not a straight shooter.

And he's not willing to do the hard things to make this state better. And that's his only job. He doesn't realize that. He thinks it's to go sing Kumbaya with a former marbillette at New College of Florida to make some big points. Meanwhile, back in our state, people are dying in these encampments. Well, I'm hoping that running nationally will bring him more to the center. Running nationally will bring him more to the center. Oh, I was like almost starting to like Bill. And now I just think he's a full blown idiot. Like that's like, you guys know the couple that's like, Oh, you know, we haven't been getting along that well. And like, things haven't been great, but I think what would help us get closer as a couple is a kid. We're going to have a kid, and this is going to solve our relationship problems.

And I don't have any kids, but I know you guys that have kids out there, that is the worst possible thing you could do if your relationship isn't sound, right? So imagine somebody who has a state with a GDP the size larger than most countries, and the whole entire thing is going to shit. I mean, and we don't even need to get into the, the homeless problem. We don't even have to talk about the crime. We could just simply talk about the roads. Like if you live here in the Bay area and you drive eight 80, or if you drive a six 80, or if you drive five 80, it's, it's, you will fucking, you might hit a pothole that would blow your tire out. Pullo back me up on this one. He's, it's, you will fucking, you might hit a pothole that would blow your tire out.

Pullway will back me up on this one. He's, he commutes all over the Bay Area. And you know, dude, some of those potholes and even the infrastructure portion of it, it's just falling apart. Oh, the phone line's open. Okay. All right. Thank you, Simon.

We got the phone line going. First time on the show. Let me just get the Bluetooth going. Wait, what's happening happening what else is playing wait i'm getting a weird echo now is it my phone okay standby hold on hold on okay there we go it was playing on my phone at the same time and I can hear myself and echo and it was really odd. OK, Bluetooth on. OK, Rodecaster. Rodecaster. And then, of course, I'm probably going to have to have one of you guys call it so we could test it real quick. But it would be fun to get some of your inputs on a few of these topics.

One second. All right. It says we are connected. Okay. And I'll run the phone line at the bottom and I'll switch screens in a moment here. Banners. All right. Boom. We're live calling. Yeah. Okay. So anyhow, talking about the giving somebody a state and they run it into the ground. Again, we're not even referring to the homeless problem or the crime problem, just simply like infrastructure and the ability for people to live here, to afford to live here and being able to solve some of those problems. a lot of people would go, well, what is he supposed to do? What? He is the fuck. Gavin Newsom is the guy in charge, right? He is the guy in charge. And if you're going to be the guy in charge, everything rises and falls on you.

And to think that taking him from a state level to a national level leadership is somehow going to make him a better leader and to take more responsibility is insane. It's exactly the same thing that I just talked about of like people having problems in their relationship. So they buy a dog together or they have a kid together or they think that, okay, well, if we just get married and take it to the next step, you know, things will get better. And it's like, no, you're just putting more on a shitty situation. So fix the situation first before you give more responsibility and in his case, more power as

well, too. And listen, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I have like the answers for the for the mental health problems that have the open drug drug camps that are falling into California. I'm not here to say that I have all the solutions to the crime problem as well. But all I know is that anything that happens in and around my gym is my fault. It's my responsibility. Even if I don't know how to figure out how to fix it, I better start working towards some sort of solutions to just at least start making progress towards fixing it. And I people, and I get fired all the time, and we don't have the ability to fire our governor because if they try to do the recall,

you saw the propaganda that came out. There's way too many people that are infected here with the mind virus. And they're just like, they're afraid. So they would rather just live in the shithole. And what I mean by I get fired all the time is like anytime a member leaves the gym, I got fired. Anytime a coach is saying, hey, you know, I'm not taking my hours anymore, or I'm going to do this or do that, and I won't coach anymore, I got fired. Anytime

something that happens in the gym that has a negative effect or anything on the community, me personally, or however it goes, it's always going to come down to me, whether it was my responsibility or not. Hey, one of the coaches didn't shut the back gate. The whole entire place got robbed. That's not a true story. I'm just making this up. Again, that is my fault. Even though I wasn't the one that was there, I still had to train the coach properly. I still had to make sure that they knew what they were doing, that they were competent in their tasks that I could delegate to to them so that way that task would still continue to get done. And if I don't do it, that's 100% on me. I didn't provide enough there. And so for somebody like

Bill Meyer, who has a really big voice in the space and has a really large audience to say, well, not all these things could be his fault. He doesn't really know. How would you solve the problems? It's like, motherfucker, I'm not being paid to figure that out. He is. He is in charge. And we definitely need the ability to hold our leadership more accountable. And I just wanted to just highlight that a little bit because I often think sometimes people think that they're higher up, that they should be somehow void of like accountability or responsibility. And I just think that's totally bullshit. Like if you truly have somebody who's leading for the front, from the front, then they are

just a person who is willing to take total responsibility for everything that happens around them. And it's funny because I find myself aligning with more and more of those type of people in life. And I kind of look for that. Like you see something comes up and you're like, how are they going to react to this? And I'm not talking like a tongue in cheek where they're just, you know, venting about the situation. I'm talking about when the dust has settled, how are they reacting? Are they becoming a victim? Well, how was I supposed to figure it out? I didn't have the resources. I didn't know what to do. Or they take a response like, hey, we screwed up there. And I definitely have to figure out how to how to solve this problem. I don't know what to do. Or they take a response like, hey, we screwed up there.

And I definitely have to figure out how to how to solve this problem. I don't know yet, but I'm going to actively work towards doing that and show you that there's that there's progress. 12 daily doses, give the police more power. Man, I don't give the police more training, give the police more resources. I agree with that power. No, I don't think, I don't think more power is, is the solution, but I also think that it's going to come down to the personal responsibility of all of us. If the leader from the top is blaming somebody else is blaming Trump for their problems or is blaming other things that are outside of their control, that's going to trickle down through everything. If I start taking that same exact approach in my affiliate and just start being able to blame it, well, hey, this happened, or hey, I was going to

get to it, but this happened, or hey, don't you know I'm really busy, so I couldn't make that? How do you think the coaches are going to act in there? How do you think Albert, my GM, is going to act? He's going to do those same exact things because he's just going to mimic my same behavior because I'm tolerating that. And there's therefore, since I'm tolerating it, I am now setting that as the standard. And we talked a little bit last time about what you tolerate becomes the standard. And, um, you don't like, if you're looking in terms of like leaders or political leaders or like anything else, like if, if they have that victim mindset, if they're blaming, if they're tolerating a lot of bullshit, that is their standard. And that's definitely not somebody who I want to elevate to become president. Although I will make

the prediction here. Clearly Biden is unfit to serve anything. He can't even serve his own food into his mouth, let alone the country. Right. And there was another clip that was from Patrick Bet-David's podcast earlier today, and I wanted to get it for the show. I'm not going to let you guys wait while I fumble with it here. But Gavin Newsom was essentially talking about how well Biden did. And of course, he's going to do that because they're in the same party. And that's part of the problem, too, is like people just pony up and just tow the party line regardless of how ridiculous it is. But I bring that up just to say that like anybody who wants to hold up...

How do I want to phrase this? Eric Weinstein had a really great thing on this. And it was like, you pulled past a cop and they're kind of directing traffic because there was this horrific accident, right? Like, I mean, just imagine the most horrific accident you can have. No, I think... The Sav the most horrific accident you can have. No, I think, uh, the Savant podcast, uh, phone isn't working. I think it's working. I just don't think anybody's called. I think it's working, but it's not, it didn't, no one's called. Um, so when you pass by that, that scene, right. And then the cop goes, says, uh, this was Eric Weinstein's example. I, move along here, folks,

there's nothing to see. And clearly, there is something to see. There is a horrific scene behind you. And he wants you to just move along because there's nothing to see there. And what they're really asking of you, and if you guys go back and watch some of these clips of Gavin Newsom, where he's supporting and saying that Biden did a good job. What he's asking of you too, and in the example of the cop, is they're asking you to not look at reality for what it is. They want you to say, I know what you guys are seeing and what's coming of it, but I want you to just pretend it's not there. I want you to just make believe this isn't happening.

Only listen to what I'm saying and agree with it. And so in something as obvious as the, oh, phone got sent a voicemail? Oh, I'm getting no calls on my end. Hmm. Okay. My calls are so muffled. Otherwise, I'd call. Okay.

Sorry about that. Magnus, 12-day doses call in, test the line, give Susan some action. I guess it was I tried to call in to test the line and sent a voicemail. Oh. Hmm. Okay. I don't know why. to call in to test the line and sent a voicemail. Oh, okay. But whenever you have somebody who is clearly saying, I know what you guys are seeing and I want you to ignore that reality

and just focus on what I'm saying, that's fucking, that's so dangerous. That is like, I mean, right around the corner from that is going to be horrific stuff that we're going to be told just to ignore. And it kind of happened during the government lockdowns a couple years ago. Hey, we know you guys think that it's not as bad as it is. I'm going to talk about this delicately so we don't get dinged by our tech overlords. I know you guys think it's not as bad as it is. It's not killing people at the rate that we thought it was, and it's not as contagious for some groups, but we need you to ignore that reality and just listen to what we're telling you to do. Think about that. Please ignore the reality

and just listen to what I tell you to do. Scary stuff. Anyways, I wanted just to show you guys that. I thought it was cool. And I thought it was cool to relate it back to where responsibility lies and where the buck stops. Susan, what's your number? I need to call in. Let me just go ahead. It's 925... No, I'm not telling you on the air, Jeremy. Are you crazy? What are you crazy? I don't know why it's not forwarding. Usually, it's worked in the past. That's all right. We'll get that sorted out. Okay. So now when we talk about responsibility, we talk about who the buck stops with. We talk about who's in charge. Now we're moving on to private equity. No reason to string all those together and no one deal.

How does that work? Okay, so this is my little first portion of the video here. As always, you guys know I'm going to kind of stop it just at random times. We're not listening to a ton of this, but I only get about seven seconds. I only get about seven seconds. So here we go. Private equity has minted more global billionaires than oil and technology. It's a $4.7 trillion global business. $4.7 trillion global business.

At some point, the numbers just get so massive, you're just like, what? It doesn't even matter. That according to some outlets, has crushed your ability to buy a house and your chance to relive your childhood at Toys R Us. Private equity is simultaneously the ultimate career goal of every insufferable business bro. Every insufferable business bro. I'll leave that section at that. I wanted to introduce you guys to that channel there, which is how money works and use that first portion because as more and more people understand what private equity is, they understand that basically what it's doing is it's just eating up a bunch of companies so they could just build themselves into this powerhouse company for just keeping it super

basic. Just some bro talk right there. Julian, $19.99, funds to fix the phone. Thank you. I appreciate that. My cut of that will be the 99 cents at the end, so it'll put it to good. No, I'm just joking. The reason why we want to talk about the private equity is because it's not just in the realm of CrossFit where it's touched our world. The private equity group moves around and just continues to just buy stuff up. And when you buy up more and more companies and we put in all this bureaucratic stuff, meaning I have my middle management who reports to my executives, who report to the CEO, who reports to the board, who reports possibly to the managing partners or maybe the managing partners are sitting within the board. So you have all those layers of people that are going to have their hands in making any decisions. You're going to have all those layer of people

that are going to write the checks to say, okay, we're going to fund this idea. Hey, we're not going to fund this idea and so on and so forth. And whenever you have multiple different layers of it like that, the personal responsibility starts to erode out of it because it's never like me, it's the next guy up and it's never them, it's the next guy up. And then when you get to the guy at the top, it's like, oh, well, I'm just going off the numbers. It's not me personally making the decisions. I'm just making decisions within the parameter and framework that I have. Right. Does it go to my voicemail? Does it say my name or does it just give you, Sleeky, phone is ringing on my end now,

but went to voicemail. Dang, Sleeky would have called. That would have been a fun one. Okay. So the question is, is like, as we, it moves up the rungs and as you have all these people with their hands and making the decisions and saying, let's put money to this, let's not put money to this, take money away from this, they're all pretty much after one end goal. Which this is going to be from the same exact channel that I showed you before. This is skipping ahead almost towards the end of the video for relevance of what I'm talking about. Four times before you have deployed all of your money, the companies you acquire are called portfolio companies. And your job now is to get as much money as possible

out of them for your investors. So once you acquire one of the companies, they become, and I loved how Chris Cooper called it. He called it the CrossFit baseball card. And if you look at, this is the structure of the company. We don't need to focus too much on that. But if you look at all the little businesses down below and what they're talking about here, each one of those would essentially become to the private equity group, a trading card. How is it performing? Is it making me more money? Is it making me less money? What is it doing?

And my job is one goal. It's not to promote a revolution in health. It's not to build some crazy community or culture. It's just to increase the value of the company for my investors in that company. That is the one goal. And you guys have heard us talk about that quite a bit. But how do they do that? How do they increase value into a company? Private equity firms have a bad reputation for gutting companies, laying off staff, and saddling them with tons of debt. And that's because they do this a lot. Since you own the portfolio companies, you can tell their CEOs what to do.

Since you own a portfolio company, remember that's the company that they bought, in this case, the CrossFit Chaining Guard guard you could tell the ceos what to do nope it's not a joke that's real so the first portion of that too they said they come in and they gut the companies they stack it with a bunch of debt and um and that's they pull on different levers to see if they could increase the value of the company and um i was talking with uh savon earlier today and he used the value of the company. And I was talking with Savon earlier today, and he used the analogy of like a house as I was like talking about this with him, just processing how he was going to kind of explain this. And it makes a lot of sense with the house. So if I buy a house for $100, and I put $10 down, and I use $90 of the bank's money, and then I fix up the house a little bit, put on some different paint and remodel the

kitchen a little bit. I can now value that house at $200. And at the same time, as I'm building onto the house, as I'm adding more value to it, I'm also paying down the mortgage slightly. So maybe I owed $90 to the bank. And by the time it's all fixed up and everything else, I've paid down a little bit more. So I own a little bit more equity of the home and I've made it look a little bit better. Now I've done two things. I'm able to flip the house for more because of what I've done to it. But I also own more of the

equity of the house because I paid down the debt that was due to it. So now I have two separate ways to increase the value of the company for my investors. So I say all that to say, okay, so what has CrossFit done so far? Well, we've seen CrossFit lay off quite a bit of their staff. So they came in with the baseball bat and did that whole thing. And we even just saw it in the recent with Keith Knapp and a couple of others that have been let go of the company. So they're continuing to do this, which again, every person they let go, it saves them money. Right. And, um, as they change other things in the company, like we heard Don say on, uh, uh, uh, kettlebells and cocktails

podcast that he was taking a meaningful money out of the games. Like we have no idea what that's going to look like yet, but we know that something is going to happen there too. And that's just along the lines of the same thing they did by just laying off a bunch of people. Because it's the fastest way to gain more money. You just cut your expenses and now you have more to your bottom line without having to actually grow the revenue of the company. At the same time, I guarantee you Berkshire Partners ended up getting it financed by one of their investment bakers. So perhaps as they were saying they were breaking even, they're pushing some more money to pay down that debt.

And then they're pulling both those levers at the same time. But the question is, what is their ultimate goal? What does it all end in amount to? And basically what they want to do is increase the value of the company as much as they can and sell it. That is the goal. Now, how long will it take for them to sell it? Who knows? I mean, typically, they say within the range of like three to five years, which also makes sense because if you look at the executives that come into companies that are owned by private equity groups, usually the executives and the CEOs last about the same, about three to five years. They come in, they do their job with the people that they know how to add value to the company. And then once it's there, they sell it off.

Judy Lynn, if they sell for a loss, can they write it off? Yeah. So that's another great question. If something isn't performing very well in their portfolios of companies, like, and I won't go this far down deep into it, but if you guys go to Berkshire partners.com, you could see the list of portfolio companies that they own. It's a vast portfolio. There's, there's a bunch of companies that they own. So if you look at that in terms of how the managing partners and the people who own Berkshire's are going to look at it, CrossFit isn't as important to them as it is to us because it's one thing in a multiple of their portfolios. And Judy Lynn said, if they sell it for a loss, can they write it off? Well, maybe they're just going to sell it off because it isn't performing well. And they also just want to cut their losses. So who knows? No private equity, don't play that. I'm not sure

what that comment meant, Sunday Rambler, but I'm glad you're back to one of your original photos there. I always liked the monkey with the rainbow paint across the bottom. So who exactly would they sell it to? Judy Reed, sorry, tax write-off. I don't know if it's going to be a tax write-off in that sense. I'm not familiar with that structure, but you could be right because on personal income level, that's how that would work, right? But Berkshire's only worth a trillion or two. Well, be careful. Don't get Berkshire and Hathaway confused with Berkshire Partners. So Berkshire, a lot of people know, is owned by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, the late Charlie Munger. But Berkshire Partners is different. It's not Berkshire and Hathaway.

Okay. So I just looked into a couple other private equity groups that would predict who would want to buy CrossFit. Would they be interested in buying CrossFit? And I found the Roar Capital here, and I'll show you guys this. Okay, so you're going to see something right off the bat here. Whoops. It would have been interesting if the phone worked to get you guys' opinions on some of this. Oh, wait, where'd it go? Hold on, guys. Sorry. Bear with me here.

There we go. At the top. Okay. Okay, so this group I looked into into and I didn't dive super deep into the research with this. I had relatively limited time, but I just wanted to look at the landscape of who's going to buy CrossFit and why would they want to buy it and what would they do with it? Okay. So I found this group here. I'm just going to call it Roark Capital. I don't even know what it is. But if you look at their portfolio of companies, these are all the companies that they own. Now, what are we seeing here? Well, I see some fast food. We got some Baskin Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Cinnabon,

Carl's Jr. Oh, Anytime Fitness. Okay. Oh, Base Camp Fitness. Hmm. Okay. Now we have a couple other Dunkin' Donuts popular. Oh, Fitness Connection. Another one. Interesting. Okay. Now we have a couple other Dunkin' Donuts popular. Oh, Fitness Connection. Another one. Interesting. Okay. So then as we go through, we look more. Oh, we see I9 Sports, another fitness brand. Hey, we snuck in Jamba Juice and Jimmy John's in there. That's cool. A couple more food places. I keep going and boom, I see this behemoth, Orange Theory. Okay. As I go further down, I see a bunch more stuff. Oh, the bar method. We don't know any employees that worked at the bar method that now work at CrossFit. No, I don't think so. And then we got Two Men in a Truck, which is actually a great story about that company. We got Cheesecake Factory, if you guys know that. So as I look along this

list of different people or different portfolio companies that this group owns here, it's an interesting mix of fitness brands and fast foods. Interesting. So if I were to make a prediction, I could see that Roark Capital might be a strong potential buyer or somebody like them who own a bunch of the fitness brands. What would they do with it, Matt? it, they could take CrossFit and they could start to roll it into some of those other places. In Orange Theory and Bar Method know how to do a commercial boutique kind of run-of-the-mill fitness really well. I mean, those companies make a lot of freaking money, guys. So I don't know. And again, if we kind of look at like, okay, what is CrossFit doing in terms of like how they're going to position the company? If you look like as more as it comes in line with like an Orange Theory or an F45 or some of these things, more and more you start to wonder like, hmm, are they just positioning it to look attractive to different companies like this that already have multiple fitness brands that they could somehow utilize and leverage CrossFit to roll it into their larger portfolio companies. Judy Reed, Orange Theory Fitness

is also called CrossFit Lite. I don't know. Professor Chaos, Carl's Jr., heart. The oh well. If you guys watched Hiller's video with Frank, every time the eyes came up and it did the oh well bit, it just got funnier as it went. I don't know why that one gets me so much.

But that was pretty funny. So it's pretty interesting when you look at what the private equity group, what Brookshire Partners wants to do and where it's going to position CrossFit and where it could lead in the future. We know one thing for sure, CrossFit is going to be sold. And then the same kind of stuff that we saw as it transitioned from ownership under Greg to Brookshire Partners and all that stuff that took place, the firing, the restructuring, all of that stuff inevitably will happen again when it's sold. Because if you think about it, if a company that they buy comes with its own accounting department and marketing department in a place like Roark Capital already have all that with under the fitness realm. There's no need for them to spend money on that.

They would just let all that go and just do it with the internal teams and resources that they already have. So just kind of something, a little food for thought for you guys in terms of where it's all going. I'm hoping UFC buys CrossFit. Interesting. in terms of where it's all going. I'm hoping UFC buys CrossFit. Interesting.

Interesting. Interesting. So whenever you guys are looking at who might buy it or who might be in the market for it, again, you could make those connections yourself. And also, too, I want to make note of something as in explaining that it wasn't actually to show it as a negative. It was just basically to show it as the reality as it is. And that was on purpose. I hope this caller That was on purpose. I hope this caller knows. Okay, I'm not going to answer this one,

just in case they're not calling to call on the show. Okay. And sorry, I lost my train of thought there. How do I get it back? What are you saying? Anyways, you could kind of guess those next moves and where i was putting it um sorry i lost my train of thought i had a point that i was going to make there let's try to guess frank's new alias poor frank hillary like if there was a gift of like somebody okay we're going twice all right

we're going with it now hold on hi you're live on the air. Hello? Hello. Okay. Sorry. I thought you were calling because you were calling into the show. And then when you call back, I was like, maybe you're calling into the show, but I don't think you are. Oh my gosh. I'm calling. Oh, that's why he forwarded the wrong number. That explains it. Oh, my God. That is so funny. That explains it. Haley, congratulations.

You are the first caller into my show on Tuesday afternoon. I am so honored. Thank you for calling in. And you can let someone know that he forwarded his phone, not the live call-in number, which makes sense. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. Okay.

I'll let him know. All right. Bye. Okay. Bye. Have a good show. Thanks. Oh, that was funny. I thought when it was like the double call that there was like an emergency, but it makes more sense. Um, Andrew, I wanted to find this meme that had somebody like running somebody over and then like backing him up and like running him over again then like oh man dude your video by the way um this is wasn't on topic at all

but we're gonna take a quick swerve here because now that i know that uh mr andrew hiller is in the comment section in watching the show. If you guys haven't already, this freaking thing, this movie Hiller made, movie, episode, whatever you want to call it. Bring it up. you want to call it um bring it up this 48 hours with hayley adams dude hiller great job bro i mean this in the the way that you edit it shows to like i mean i know you had a lot of depth to like your videos and how you create them and stuff like that too but dude this one bro you knocked it out of depth to your videos and how you create them and stuff like that too. But dude, this one, bro.

You knocked it out of the park. These sit-down interviews were some of the best that I've seen come out of the CrossFit space in a really long time, dude. So I'll be completely honest here. I threw it on when you... And I'm going to flex here. You sent me a little private screener. Thank you for that. But I threw it on and I was like, okay, I want to do some programming,

some scheduling stuff, prep for my week and just kind of have this on as background. So I could like pay, you know, listen to it and, and somewhat pay attention. And dude, I stopped everything I was doing and I was just watching the video like a few minutes in, I was like, oh shit, like this is holding my attention really good here. And I'm like, I'm, I'm in,, I'm invested in it now. So no work got done until after all 53 minutes and 50 seconds were watched. So if you guys haven't already, which I'm sure you have knowing this crowd, go check it out. That video is going over 100,000 in the next couple of days, guaranteed.

So congrats, Hiller. Cool stuff, dude. All right, now that I completely derailed myself from the show. So mom warned me too in the past. He's like, you have to have a pen so you can just write down and come back to your notes there. Oh, okay. We're going to tie it together. It came back to me, guys.

So showing you the private equity, talking about Gavin Newsom, and then also tying it together with, hey, we know you see the reality, but don't worry about what you see actually happening. Just worry about what we're saying. Right. And so we kind of see that happening a little bit coming out of that private equity group with CrossFit, meaning like, hey, you know that you're seeing it go down this path, but trust us, it's OK. It's OK. You were saying you didn't want to bring it up as to be seen as a negative. Yeah. Thank you.

And so that basically just sums up that I don't think those, I don't think the private equity group are the bad guys. Like I know that I know that it's doing a lot to our community and everything else, but they're just doing their job. That's what they're doing. Private equity got purchased in CrossFit forever changed as we know it and rather than looking back and saying i hope they do the stuff that they did in the past we could just look at what private equity groups and where they're going in the future and know that there's going to be um some more of that again not necessarily a good or a bad thing on them just it is it is what it is it is what it is okay all right moving on last topic of the day comes to us from our good folks over at

Broken Science Initiative. Bring up the website here. So here's the BSI website. If you guys haven't, you can log in there. They're creating really these cool community there where you can comment. You can see these different topics. If you guys haven't already, go in there and drop your email, and you'll get these articles delivered to your inbox every day. And the one that you guys probably recognize from the thumbnail is all the way over the right, screen right, screen left. And that's what we're going to be talking about today.

So let me bring this up real quick. Here is the article written about the article with the rats. So it goes on to say here that a review article with some obviously fake and non-scientific illustrations created by artificial intelligence was the talk on February 15th. It says today, but this was, I think, February 15th. It says today, but this was, I think, yeah, February 15th. The figures in the paper were generated by the AI tool MidJourney, which generated some pretty but nonsensical illustrations with unreadable text. It appears that neither the editor nor the two peer reviewers

looked at the figures at all. The paper was peer reviewed within a couple of weeks and published two days ago, which would be on February 15th or 13th. Sorry. The paper that was by Xin Yu Gu, it's a Chinese name there, has a bunch of these photos. And I'll kind of zoom in so you guys could see like a little bit better, has a bunch of these photos, and I'll kind of zoom in so you guys could see a little bit better, has a bunch of these AI-generated photos. And if you guys look at the writing there, it's literally just made-up words in some cases. And this straight up looks like a bowl of cereal with what seems to be stem cells in it. Oh my goodness, Right. So like this was literally left in the paper. The authors did

disclose that the figures were generated by mid journey. That was the AI tool that generated these images, but the images are anatomically and scientifically incorrect. Okay. So the article just goes on to kind of describe the different figures that you guys are looking at. If you go to click this link here, which brings you to where the paper was published, and I'll bring that up here, you're just going to get this notice on Frontiers. That was who published this peer-reviewed paper. And there's been a retraction. It's not there anymore because all their photos were AI-generated and made absolutely no sense. So all the claims are still in the office or those of the publisher, the editors, and reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim may not be manufactured or...

Okay, sorry. That wasn't what I wanted to read to you guys. Yeah. So if you look here, it was published on February 13th of this year. And it was retracted on February 16th. This hit Twitter on February 15th. So it didn't stay alive very long because people knew that the whole thing was bullshit. Sevan, I forwarded the wrong phone. Yeah, we got that. We got it.

We got it figured out. Thanks. So yeah, so you guys could go. You want me to read their action? Yeah. We'll bring that up. So you guys could go check this out yourself if you want to do it in a little bit more detailed here. But following the publication,

concerned were raised regarding the nature of its AI-generated figures. The article does not meet the standards of the editorial in the scientific rigor for frontiers in cell and development biology. Oh, but you published it, didn't you? Therefore, the article has been rejected. Yeah, of course.

I mean, it passed through and it published and this harms your guys' credibility like so much so. Okay. So what's the point, Matt? Why would BSI write this article about this? And obviously, it got found out right away. Problem solved, right? Well, not really. Article goes on this from the article here. Of course, we can all have a good laugh at these figures and wonder how on earth the handling editor and the two peer reviewers didn't catch this. But the paper is actually a sad example of how scientific journals, editors, and peer reviewers can be naive or possibly even in the

loop in terms of accepting and publishing AI-generated crap. These figures are clearly not scientifically correct, but if such botched illustrations can pass peer review so easily, more realistic-looking AI figures have likely already infiltrated the scientific literature. Okay, this is the whole entire point I want to drive home here. So I'm going to read that one more time. But if such botched illustrations can pass peer review so easily, more realistic looking AI generated figures have likely already infiltrated the scientific literature. Generative AI will do serious harm to the quality, trustworthiness, and the value of scientific papers. So basically, the point of this and why

this article was written, because these are comically, you guys saw it in the thumbnail and you're like, dude, this is ridiculous. What this is ridiculous. You're, um, what the hell is that? It's a rat with like a huge balls and dong. Like, yeah, it's kind of weird. Right. But that made it through two different people peer reviewed it. And then, um, uh, frontiers published it. Okay.

And there was like made up words in ridiculous looking illustrations, illustrations. Ridiculous looking illustrations. But what happens when the AR generated images are so freaking real looking that we can't tell the difference? in the research that they were taking Photoshopped images and dropping them into their paper to get it passed so that way they could get grants, which is just giving them money for their stuff. Imagine now an AI-generated image so real that it makes the research and it makes the paper looks like it does what it's supposed to do.

We ran the experiment. Here we go. But it was all made up. It was all AI generated. Kind of scary stuff. And the reason why this is so important too is because all of our fearless leaders like Mr. Gavin Newsom, who we talked about at the beginning of the show, what do they tell you to do? They tell you to follow the science. Has it been peer reviewed? Are you a doctor? Was that a published article? Because this is the voice of authority and this is what they're using to block other people from talking because, oh, well, it wasn't peer reviewed. Oh, well, it wasn't published from one of these noteworthy publishing things or an institution like Harvard, like we talked

about last time, right? So now all of a sudden we're saying, oh, okay, okay. So the authority is the peer review, the popularity contest. The authority is getting your paper published. And that's going to be the holy grail to give you the credibility you need to follow the science. But as we see in these two examples that we pointed out last week and this week from the good folks over at Broken Science, that the house of cards is falling. And there's more and more of this type of stuff coming out than there is not. And so I really like what they're doing over there

as far as making people aware of this, because I didn't really think about AI generated images used in that regard. It was like, AI is coming to steal the jobs. But quickly, AI will become the voice of authority. And if you guys follow Sevan's account, like his Instagram, his personal one, and you saw what he did giving the AI chatbot some different prompts and like the weird shit it spit out, hold on to your hats because that could soon become the authority. Because why would you question the computer? You wouldn't. It knows more than you. It's smarter than you. Okay. Dan Grady, AI generated images aren't necessarily bad. It's a drawing either way. The issue is if it's nonsense or what if they're using those images

to illustrate the points that they're making off their hypothesis and then those images are used to give the hypothesis credibility of everything that's done in the paper. And then you can't tell the difference between the images that are being made up by AI or the images that are actually real that they used in the scientific experiment. There's one last piece at the end of the article here that I just want to read. And I want you guys, we'll do the test here in a minute

and see just so you guys can see it. But at the very bottom of the article, it reads, but recent advances in AI technology mean we're already past the stage where a human can distinguish a fake photo from a real photo. Just take this recent New York Times quiz to see if you could spot the difference. Let's take the quiz, shall we? Okay. And I'll kind of give some pause here to let you guys see. Here's the quiz. These images here are AI generated. Holy crap, all these pop ups. These images here are either real or AI generated. They give us 10 options and you have to pick AI or real. And then at the end,

it'll tell you what your score was out of 10. And I'll drop the link right here for you guys. So there it is. Normally we hate the New York Times, but this little portion of it was good here. Okay. So let's see. What do we see? Zach says AI. Matt Burns says time to train. Good afternoon. Thanks for hanging out. Rambler says fake. Okay. So what do we think? Professor says human. Let's find out. We'll go with, we had more fake than we had AI. So AI. Wrong. It's real. Okay, try another. What do you guys think? Real or fake?

Real or fake? I'll do it with glasses. Is it real or fake? I say it's real. Hey, got it right. Got it right. I'm going to try one more, and then I'll let you guys have fun with this.

Real or fake? Real or fake? Looks real to me. It's AI. And it's basically just a guess. Sunday Rambler, too fugly. Do you read? Woohoo, I'm 50%. All right, you're going to start peer reviewing some of the papers. Zach, oh, fuck off. We're screwed. fuck off. We're screwed. Yeah. Let's do cakes next. Dude. So right. Like the cakes that they make up that are supposed to look like real things. Is this real or is this a cake? Great little bit there, Philip. Yeah. So that's just, it's kind of scary, right? Like in terms of being able to decipher what's real or what's not. And like, we usually think of it and just kind of scary, right? Like in terms of being able to decipher what's real or what's not. And like we usually think of it in just kind of like fun ways of like, oh, well, this celebrity's

nude got leaked. No, it was AI generated. But when it comes to infiltrating our science in our medicine and everything else, it all of a sudden becomes a pretty, pretty scary thing. Yeah, there's really no way for peer review to know whether the data are fake or real at CrossFat. So that's definitely an issue. I'll give you guys a... I think I didn't recommend reading last time. I really didn't want this to become part of it each time. But yes, I do have it. This book was on the CrossFit reading list. I think they were recommended by like Greg or

somebody. This was from a while back, but this was a fantastic book. It's called Rigor Mortis, How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions by Richard Harrison. I definitely think that you guys should check this out. The read's super interesting, but it basically says that there's no more rigor in science, meaning there's a replication crisis. One person will come up and be like, hey, we ran this experiment. Here's the results.

And they'll retest using the same scientific method that they originally found the results with, and they're not able to duplicate it in any way. So that's an issue. That'll go over there for right now. Be on the lookout, people. Use your brains. Be on the lookout.

Times is a changing. Okay, and we're going to finish up with this bit here. I like this because with all that being said, sometimes we need to focus on not just saying, well, we're fucked. There's nothing we could do, but saying, hey, we have personal responsibility and we could do our parts within ourselves to make this world a better place. And this is our friend Dear Modern, who I found here on the interwebs that I thought was kind of cool. And we'll play now. Don't be a wiener. This bathroom is so disorganized. I want a new one.

Fix it. This sofa is so old and saggy i want a new one fix it this is so annoying it keeps blocking my way i want a new one. Fix it. So, I thought that would end on a great reminder there that it is within our power and our responsibility to, when we see a problem, don't complain and think we need to throw

the baby out with the bathwater, but we can fix it. Or, to some degree, maybe do our part to fix it. Alrighty, guys. Thank you so much for hanging out again on the but we can fix it or to some degree, maybe do our part to fix it. All right, you guys, thank you so much for hanging out again on the Tuesday. Like I said, uh,

I will try to get these shows more regularly on, uh, 11 AM, but you guys are kind of coming along with my normal crazy schedule. Got up, coached a class, went out to Hayward, coached a bunch of firefighters to be,

cause they're in the Academy and, um and scrambled home to get back to you guys. Thank you so much for hanging out. I think maybe next time we could get the phone line working. So it'd be really cool to just get your guys's opinions on some of the different material that I'm bringing up to discuss. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. If there's anything you want to talk about or dig a little deeper in in the world of crossfit or outside of it in general uh please send it to me shoot me a dm and um we could uh bring it up in the next one okay brook ends update yes oh fuck are you guys gonna start doing this where you ask me what's going on with the schedule to get some insider

look i like what's happening and who's coming up. Crafty, Ken. Crafty. Brooke Entz, yes, she will be on soon. I promise you that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We realized the phone was going somewhere else. Random question. Own FLRG, how much do you snatch? Any given day? Like if you and I just walked outside and went to go do it right now, probably be good for like 195 to like 200. My best ever,

235. Okay, guys. Thanks for hanging out. Oh, own flag. Got it wrong. Okay. Uh, let's talk about the psychology behind MILFs on the next episode. Yeah, I'll dig. I'll dig into that and see how that's, uh, going. Uh, tinfoil, uh, Matt Tuesdays. Okay. All right. We'll see. Last question.

How many sausages have you ate today? Not enough. Yon Clark. Not enough. You could always fit one more sausage in the mouth. All right, guys. Have a great day. I'll see you next time. Greg Glassman on tomorrow morning.

Bye-bye.