S02E38 The Origin of CrossFit Bison Part 2
The saga of life and hard business lessons continue for the two former energy futures traders who decided to open up an CrossFit gym in North Jersey. Now one of the largest gyms participating in the CrossFit Open in the world, CrossFit Bison @crossfitbison continues to celebrate its 8th anniversary with a look back at how it came to be.
We continue our talk with special guest, David's business partner and fellow coach @christafaro, about how CrossFit Bison grew from a dream into reality, including all the ups and downs along the way and the perseverance that it took to finally will CrossFit Bison into existence. Whether you want to learn more about CrossFit Bison, how to start an affiliate, or how to make your own affiliate better, we dig into the details.
You can find more information at our website, HerdFitUSA.com. Like and subscribe wherever you watch or listen to our podcast!
@crossfit @crossfitgames #crossfit #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #agoq #clean #fitness #ItAllStartsHere #CrossFitOpen #CrossFit #CrossFitCommunity @CrossFitAffiliates
S02E38 The ORIGIN OF CF BISON PT 2
[00:00:00] Sam Rhee: All right. You guys bought $30,000 worth of equipment. You are as Loring and right. And all the flooring, and then you hit another nag at that
[00:00:09] David Syvertsen: point. So basically we're just like, this is us, the inexperience where you come in and you think it's going to be a quick buildup in two months, we're running classes.
People are asking us now, , when is your first class we're getting email inquiries, right? Like I will probably be open October and then we go through this process with the town of. I've had having to get a variance, a usage variance. And we're like, okay what's that we call the town.
Like sometimes they pick up, sometimes they don't this, and this is how, small town politics. It gets a little tough with, they meet once a month, the zoning boards and planning boards and we need to hire architects and all this stuff that is just, honestly, it was above our heads.
We didn't really truly understand. We have a much stronger grasp of it now, but going through it for the first time. We would want an answer tomorrow. It took us five weeks to get an answer on a simple question. And there were so many hoops you had to jump through. We had to hire someone and pair like two grand to sit in our parking lot, to see how many cars were driving by the gym.
And on a given day, the city plan to open up. And and that's, you have to respect the process. You can't go into the town office, hit the desk and be like, this is stupid. There is a reason behind everything and you respect it.
[00:01:20] Sam Rhee: Now dealer described something very similar in his experience
[00:01:23] David Syvertsen: at park city as well.
And you get frustrated, trust me that do I think the system could be cleaner and more business-friendly shore. But at no point were we thinking that we were being tossed around or disrespected, it's just, it was a really slow process. And. Someone on the outside says, oh, it took you a few months.
Every single day that we weren't open was extra stress for us. It was so hard to deal with. And it was financial. It was just self-worth. It was, when is Chris doing with his job? There were so many days where you want it to do something, but you couldn't, there was nothing.
So you just sat there and thought about it over and over again. And eventually we got in front of the board, we got to make a presentation and that was when it started to actually. Yeah, we have to go literally go in front of you, picturing you're in a room. There's these eight people higher than you.
And you're standing there, like in a dress, a button up shirt explaining what CrossFit is because they did not want a gym where 150 people were going to go there at any given point, like a normal gym. They didn't understand that we were not paresis at the time, which is now fitness 19. It wasn't like that gym because if it was, yeah, we didn't have enough parking, but they're like no.
Trust me. We can cap how many people come to the gym at all times. And that goes in line with your fire codes and all this stuff, right? Yep. And then once we got that approval, we were giving high fives. And then I think the funniest thing, Chris does a good job of telling this story when you crush, you take it from
[00:02:49] Chris Tafaro: here.
So at the electricity, so we would just go and try to occupy ourselves right now at this point, I think. Don with pre-bond putting, I'm putting together a desk, right? A like Ikea front desk. And I'm Dave , he's the property manager at the place that we're renting and he helped us out a lot.
Yeah. But so the walls finally built, right? We think we're we're almost there, right? Let at the end of the tunnel. And then he says, have you guys gotten electricity? And I'm like for what he goes for the lights. I'm like, you hit the switch, the lights go on. What do you mean? What do we have to do?
No, that's for the whole building. Now you have to section off you, you get your own electricity for each section. What does that require a generator by
[00:03:36] David Syvertsen: generator, a generator. And one of those, like the switchboards,
[00:03:40] Chris Tafaro: how much has that. Oh, I D I don't know, $10,000. What are you
[00:03:48] David Syvertsen: kidding me,
[00:03:49] Chris Tafaro: Dave, look, I was sitting on the floor with a screwdriver and Dave, he said, I've never seen you look so defeating in your life.
And oh my God. Another thing we had to do. Yeah. And just
[00:04:01] David Syvertsen: keep in mind, the lights were on like, like we never thought about that. It was just show up, flip the lights with John, and now we have to go get our own electric system wired for our gym, with its own generator. And it was two pieces of equipment that, we use an electrician that found like a refurbish thing, but I think it ended up costing six or seven grand, but it was still like, we didn't have, we didn't have anything left.
We had no money,
[00:04:26] Chris Tafaro: It was literally a square we rent. There wasn't even. Sectioned off lights. Of course we had to pay for our own lights. It was the warehouses lights that we were using before, but now they put the wall up. It was going to be dark in there very soon.
[00:04:39] David Syvertsen: And I think we were just weeks away from being open.
So keep in mind, whenever you do work like this, you have to go get a permit and then you have to get it inspected. And then there's firewall, like all these things that we're trying to open up in two weeks. I'm like we're at the bottom of the barrel at this point. I still remember that to this day, going to King's and mill.
To go buy four avocados. And I didn't know if my car was going to get declined. It was literally, I was at that point and it was like, these are just lessons that you learn. Like you have to try to learn as much of this stuff before. If we knew this stuff ahead of time, if we were going to open up another gym at some point.
There wouldn't be like, Hey, like we don't put a timeline on it. You just say, it'll eventually get done. Don't make any changes to your life until it's done. And that's that, and you know that now the fun stuff comes in. Now. Now we open up the gym and it's, this is now February, 2014. It's remember I left my job October, 2012, thinking we were about to open up a gym, February, 2014.
This one we held our first class. Do you remember that? I do. And I also remember that the. The second day we were open, we got snow blizzard. So we had to close the gym for the day. What was the first one? I don't know. I think it was kettlebell swings, goblet squats, and sit ups. And it was an outrageously easy workout.
That's another thing we'll talk about how much the program's evolved, I'm pretty sure it was like a night. 15 down to three of kettlebell swings, goblet squats, and sit-ups I noticed those three movements and it was Aaron sirens and the Megan Miller two members that are still with us today, which is cool, Erin and Megan, I've seen this place from the start.
And I think our biggest thing early on is we want it to do what Hoboken did and run free class sunset. For people to come try. That's really how you have to try to get, you have to offer free stuff to people to get them hooked in, but you don't wanna get taken advantage of. So it was one class every Saturday you come in.
And basically the people that came in on Saturdays were just friends. This is where having some connection to the area helped. Jayda Savile was one of the first. To ever see the inside of the gym. Remember he came in that one day. Yup. And so he came to our class, we knew Michelle from cross at Hoboken.
Some people from the church I grew up in, they came out and worked out with us. And that was the biggest thing. You want it to show people like, Hey, there are people that come here, if you invite one person. If you're one person that comes to your gym, you come in you're by yourself. How would you not be skeptical about, Hey, is this place legit?
Are these guys credible? Is this thing for real? How much
[00:07:05] Sam Rhee: were you guys charging at the time? Do you remember your first, like how'd you set your
[00:07:09] Chris Tafaro: price? We price it against we, cheaper than Hoboken. W we looked at a lot of, I looked at a lot of websites. I think it was 1 75. Yeah. Which is still a
[00:07:19] David Syvertsen: lot of money.
Yeah. Yeah. That's,
[00:07:21] Sam Rhee: that's what CrossFit gyms charged,
[00:07:22] David Syvertsen: right? Yeah.
[00:07:23] Chris Tafaro: Yeah. So you're selling this product to people that are come in and they really don't know much about it. You don't know
[00:07:27] David Syvertsen: anything. Do you remember the day that we did an open house? Not the co Hoboken people come out and open house where come see the gym.
I think it was like the Saturday before we actually opened. Yep. We had the, yeah, we had everything lined up. We had everything lined up, everything was cleaned up and we had come people check it out. And in my head I'm always envisioned probably like a hundred people come in and just check it out. And we had six
[00:07:48] Chris Tafaro: Nick Bennett that out, he was there a lot too in the beginning.
So he helped it out. He brought some people
[00:07:53] David Syvertsen: in. Yep. Yeah. So that's how it like how we got this thing going now. I still remember to this day, and this is like just a guy that your typical guy talking to his friends from Hoboken, how many members you're gonna try to get.
I'm like, I think we'll probably get like a hundred and first month, right? Yeah. I think a month in, I tried to look back on memberships per month and I think we had 14 members after the first month and we're like, okay. So we're not even paying half our rent with this. I, one thing we did early on.
And I just got done talking to a gym owner from Morocco, actually. He's just looking for some advice, Phil, if you're listening to this is for you. We talked about schedule. How do you make a schedule? I was about to ask that. How do you make a schedule of classes when you don't have any members?
Yeah. What do you do? Do you offer a little amount so that people are always working out with. But it does not offer the flexibility that people only have certain times they can go. Or do you offer a full slate of classes, but you're going to have a lot of 1, 2, 3 person classes you,
[00:08:47] Sam Rhee: cause bison now offers more classes than almost any other CrossFit gym I've ever seen in my life.
I've gone to a bunch and I've dropped it. I've never seen
[00:08:55] David Syvertsen: so many clowns. I don't think anyone even not even in this area, just in general, I've never seen a gym with this many classes. So what did you do with your schedule at the time? This is what Chris and I we, this is a lot of work.
I'm not going to recommend this to everyone, but I think it helped our business out. Long-term we offered a full slate of classes from the start. Yeah. Because we never, we said we never want the reason to be, someone's not going to go to the gym because it doesn't fit their schedule. How many coaches.
It was just Chris and I, we actually
[00:09:22] Chris Tafaro: knew coaching at this point. It was our job. So how
[00:09:25] David Syvertsen: would you guys split the class? So basically for the most part, early on, it was did morning. Yeah. I always did mornings. And then I did most nights, I think at the star, Chris did one night a week, and then he did most of the mid days, I think.
And you just stayed there, like whether you had people come or not, you just stay at the gym. And so I remember getting home at 9 30, 10 eating dinner, and then going back at four or five in the morning, and you just said. And there were days with empty classes. There was a lot of classes with one person, which is always tough to do because there's no signup.
It was just whoever showed up. He did, you would sit in the gym. So at the old gym, you would sit in the gym. We had that little, like my old dusty laptop for our music. Yeah. But did not have a sound system. So you're just like playing off this little speaker off my computer and You would just sit there and write at the, start at the turn of 5 59 or 6 59, you would hear that door open to the lobby and you're like, someone's here.
And you would just wait to see who it is. And it's Yola, I was like, Hey, what's up? And then I'll tell you what I, it is, we talk about this coats all the time. It can be tough to coach a class with one person in it because you don't get to have that energy supply for them.
And I'll tell you what, it's probably the quickest way. I actually think that a lot of the athletes back then probably got better coaching because there was so much attention put on them then right now, when you have a class of twenties, it's a catch 22, like the class of 20 gives you more energy, more juice, but you ain't going to get that much attention.
No, I
[00:10:46] Sam Rhee: remember I, I joined in the summer of that year and I would come to 6:00 AM. More than a couple of times it was just me. And it
[00:10:56] David Syvertsen: would just be Dave sitting down, looking at me. Yeah. Yeah. And like it is it's awkward, excels. It gets awkward. And sometimes, right now I think our coaches are so developed now that they know that, Hey, this is an opportunity for me to really teach someone like Ash had one of those situations, this past one of the night for a new member.
And honestly, the girl probably learned more in that class than she does with me when there's nine of us, , but I think one of the hardest things that you have to do, and like this is where the culture of Hoboken helped us out with. When you don't have a lot of members, you don't have a nice sound system.
We didn't have a floor cleaner for the first two, three months either. All right. At some point we were like, dude, it's pretty dusty, you're trying to sell an idea to these people right now we're selling a product. That's pretty proven, like we have a lot of people that believe in this place and we have a lot of support and we have a lot of people that work for this place and the Sanchez employees
the back then you're selling almost like a fantasy. It's Hey, this is going to be awesome. You're getting here at the right time cross. It's going to take off, just trust us on this. It's done this for us. We've seen this work in Hoboken. I know you don't really, you've been working out with five pound dumbbells for your entire life and we're running on a treadmill.
But doing cleans and snatches and kettlebell swings and wall balls and pull ups and toes, a bar box jumps. It's going to get you in the best shape of your life. You're gonna meet some awesome people. What do you think about that? Remember that? Yeah.
[00:12:13] Chris Tafaro: Selling the classes with actually this is the first time in my life.
I actually really trusted the product that we were selling. I felt like anybody could have jumped into her old job and done it. But this I believed in it so much. I really. I never really doubted that it was going to work out, but we just had to put in lay the groundwork with people, so like I had a lot of classes to, I remember like Debbie Gilmore, who I got to know really well, because of, because there was just one person Stevie that would come in and work out and Tom, and I got to know, and we, because of those one-on-one sessions and basically hanging out with someone for an hour, they start to trust you and they know what you're talking about.
We've grown so grassroots that it all branches out from
[00:12:57] David Syvertsen: there it's like slow organic growth, right? Yeah. And I really
[00:13:01] Chris Tafaro: think that wasn't how I was
[00:13:02] Sam Rhee: about to say, how do you guys get the members? It was word of mouth. Just
[00:13:05] David Syvertsen: Slow. Yeah. It was so slow. And I went back and looked at our Zen, like new members.
Like we come back, we can, we have a system, a software that can say how many new members you got per month? I don't think. Our peak was in 2015, which we'll talk about probably in the next episode, but we never got more than early on, more than seven or eight new people per month. And we had a couple months with 10.
[00:13:27] Chris Tafaro: That's a really good, yeah. Cause you would also lose a person or, no one really ever left, but there might be like the move to the city or
[00:13:34] David Syvertsen: they, yeah. That kind of nicknames to Florida. Yeah.
[00:13:37] Chris Tafaro: Something like that. And then, so like the net out. If we had 10, that was a pretty
[00:13:41] David Syvertsen: good month.
So it was on average about seven people. But the one event that I feel like we ran early on that helped us out a lot. We ran a grand opening party in April, so just a couple months after. And we basically asked all of our Hoboken friends to come out and do Fike on bed at bison. And that was the first time we had more than 30 people at the gym at the time.
I think 30 or 40 people came out, we ran heats. We had five rowers. We have five boxes. So we ran heats of Fike on bed and some people brought drinks, but it really, there was no, I don't think any of them were members of the. I don't even think Aaron can actually even watched in the wide tracks.
Yeah. That was the first time Terry met were there together, I believe. Yep. And they did find they brought their kids and stuff. And I remember Terry and Matt, like they were standing back in the rig by the corner by themselves. They didn't know anyone, they didn't know anyone. And all the Hoboken people were up in the front chair.
And that's like the first time I want it to show like Terry and Matt were two people you're trying to sell this thing to, and I don't, I'm big on, trust is always earned. You don't just trust someone when you go to the gym, like you have to, the person that's running the class and running the program, you need to earn that person's trust.
So you're trying to earn tell Terry and Matt. All these people and Aaron, right? Hey, this is going to work. I promise there's people that do this and there's good results. Women, men, old, young, athletic, not athletic. And that time that those people came out, it really did show. I think that was one of the smartest things we did was get people in the door that had been doing this for years to show the, it's almost like cross, it wasn't even that well known out here.
Right.
[00:15:12] Chris Tafaro: That's what it was like to have like music pumping people, like everyone was a beast to them. The people that we are members at here, we're looking at the Hoboken people. Like they were, savages and they're doing fight gone bad. Everyone's having fun. And we're like, this is what this could be like.
And I think they saw that for the first. Yeah. You know of oh, this is what these guys are trying to do. And so whoever was there, I think that really, I don't know who was all
[00:15:37] David Syvertsen: there besides I was looking at old pictures. Oh, members. Yeah, I think it was even before Phelps and Nugent.
They'd be as they started at Murph, which was about a month later, there weren't that many members from bison that came out. That was one thing I remember we tried to, I think Bennett Detol came out. Aaron came out, but he didn't want to work out. He was still trying to figure this thing out. Terry and Matt fruit pianos, but they knew some of the people.
You want me to got Nick spar? I think that was his name. Yeah, he was there. So what's
[00:16:05] Sam Rhee: up Sam? I was going to say, when did you first break even and how many members did it take to actually get to that point?
[00:16:11] David Syvertsen: It was 2014. I do know, but breaking even also included are, yeah. Are $12,000 a year salary and Chris, I don't even think he paid himself for the first year.
[00:16:21] Chris Tafaro: Yeah no. Luckily Webby helped us out with that a little bit. But no, I, I didn't, but my break even
[00:16:30] David Syvertsen: like covering we
[00:16:30] Chris Tafaro: were, we were always, we just had to pay the rent, and like basic bills at first it was very low. So we were okay with a few members and like Marie Veekan did a year upfront membership, it's really 2000 $1,700, like right off the bat.
And that, that, that helped pat it, but mostly it was like to make sure Dave was getting through to, to pay him and then pay the rent. And we still had a lot of the money that we like, the capital that we had. So we paid for a lot of it with that, and we laid some stuff off on the American express.
And so how many
[00:16:58] Sam Rhee: members were you like? Okay. We're okay here. We're doing
[00:17:00] Chris Tafaro: all right. You never, it. We're still not like it's still I remember a razor. I was like when the original plan is when you have 90 members and you're good, but you don't realize that, the expense is also, you get more coaches, people like there's a lot more expenses.
So yeah, we were never like good. It's never it's. There. You never, it's like your fitness journey, right? You're never there the day you let up on it. You're not in shape
[00:17:27] David Syvertsen: point where you're like, oh no, I know. I think what could say is I think that next fall, so like basically our first falls, but nine months in is when we were like, all right.
I do think this thing's really good. I don't think Chris and I ever doubted that we would be able to operate a gym, but you do have to think worst case scenario, especially when you have families, you just had a kid, right? I never thought we were dead. We'd shut down. Never thought we would shut down.
So we were always secure enough in that. Is this going to be full-time career type? I would say less than a year in 2014, when we opened by the end of that year, I felt good about. And then I think are the biggest growth spurt we had in the gym was 2015 to 2019.
[00:18:03] Sam Rhee: So then did you guys do things like union guys never had advertising? You never had specials, but you did have social events and stuff
[00:18:10] David Syvertsen: At the time Christie, one of Chris's best ideas.
And I think he started in 2014 is we started a Facebook group for the members. And now w we did try advertising in like the village some times newspaper and like we, again, snakes, right? They see these young eager business owners and these people in advertising like, yo, if you get one member, this will pay for itself.
And we did it two or three times and it never really helped us out, but what we did well, Chris and I. Was, and this is where we are old school CrossFit, where I guess there's some loyalty to like that the big, bad evil Greg Glassman that some of his old school videos and his articles say this. And they're so true to this day.
We never came into this thing trying to get rich ever, and to this day. And. We, and what Glassman always said is stop trying to make more money and just make it better. That was one thing in 2014, 2015. And I was like, all right, these advertisements are not doing shit for us. Let's just try to make this thing better.
And I think what fin Chris did to make the thing better was let's hold onto the people that do. I talked to a lot of gyms, not as an, a consulting, just owners talk to each other and they lose a lot of people every month. And that's not, we've never dealt with that. We've lose people like any other gym does, but we've never lost a lot of people just because they don't like it.
And I think that's one thing, a big focus we had early on and Chris, the Facebook group, that, it's one of the best things about our gym now, even people, I know there's some people that don't use Facebook and they're not in. But it does help connect people. And if you can connect people and keep them connected outside of the gym, it makes it subconsciously a lot stronger.
So we started this Facebook group where we basically just, crack some jokes, ask how each other's feeling, make fun of each other. And then we started posting the workout results in there. What do you mean.
[00:20:04] Chris Tafaro: Yeah that so one thing with with CrossFit Hoboken, I remember it you'd always meet someone maybe on a Saturday, get their first name, but maybe forget it.
And then you don't want to go talk to them cause you should remember their name, but they know
[00:20:15] David Syvertsen: you don't know it,
[00:20:16] Chris Tafaro: and especially last names, like nobody got that and I'm always big with like first and last names in a face. With this piece of bison, the person, my idea was that the person that's working out at five in the morning would get to know the people that are working out in the midday and at night.
And they would see their name, like every day on this thing. If they commented. So you would know that that's Norman Rosenberg or Steve rice or whoever it is. And you can then. You always feel like you know that person. And then when they post, you get to know someone like a little bit better, it's oh, this is what's important to that person or and I think like that network was really big and that like things grow from that and private Facebook. So no, your parents don't have to see it. Your friends that don't care about CrossFit. Don't see
[00:20:53] David Syvertsen: it. Yeah. Not a good thing that you can add to that was we start from the beginning was we started writing down everyone's name when they go to.
And here we are nine years later, we still write down every person's name on the whiteboard with their workout result, whether it's RX scaled good, bad high reps, low rest, whatever it doesn't matter. Yeah. Again, I recently had someone asked me, Hey, and it's she was right. You used to say everyone's name right before class.
Can we get back to that? So now I'm trying to do that again. Unless we're like in a major rush, but there's a personal connection with Facebook and there's a personal connection with writing people, the coach, when their own handwriting, not on a, not typing on a keyboard, like I can tell who coach based on their handwriting on the whiteboard.
You really can't there's a personal connection there, along with the Facebook that makes people feel like they're really entrenched in this place.
[00:21:39] Chris Tafaro: Absolutely. Yeah. It's spelling their name. Like Collin with two L's. I know that, I wouldn't know that if we didn't write that on the board.
And you can get away with coaching in class without knowing five people in your class. If you didn't have to write the name on the
[00:21:49] David Syvertsen: board. That's true. That's
[00:21:50] Chris Tafaro: true. I bet. I still know everybody now I'm caught, like I know everybody in the gym, but there is always, maybe one or two days where I haven't met someone yet.
And I had to look at the app when. T. So I knew who that was. Yeah. Yeah. The app helps you. And but I could have, if it wasn't for the board, I w I wouldn't have mattered, I probably could've coached the class and just not knowing then look found out later, right?
[00:22:12] Sam Rhee: Yeah.
When did it start changing? Because I know back then you had to sell CrossFit, right? And tell people what CrossFit is. Now. I know when new people come, they see. I seen CrossFit. I want to try CrossFit. You guys are the ones I want to try CrossFit with. When did it start changing from one to the other?
[00:22:31] David Syvertsen: I think in that 2015 period, because it was on TV a lot at that point, the cross, the games and it was just becoming that's when it really started to boom, I did research on this I think last year for something different on just like the increase in boxes around.
And that's just means more people are doing it. So more people talking about it. You see it more often. This is when social media started to really explode as well, 2014, 2015 with Instagram, I think that's right when it started to really boom and take off where people were really seeking out, cross it, you Google it and bison comes up if it's close to you.
I think that's what it was. I think that's when we had to start realizing that at this point, it was me, Ashley, sorry, Chris, Ashley and myself coaching. , you have to realize at some point you can't do it all. You can't coach the way we were co I think I was at some point coach in 40 classes a week, 40, 45 classes a week, and with everything else and.
Honestly, whether it's you getting what, like just burnt out by it or the fact that the people need other voices, right? You can't assume that you can help everyone. You just, can't not everyone responds to my coaching Chris's coaching. So 2015 is when we hired some of our first coaches. Adam storms is our first hire.
That was a situation where he had so much CrossFit experience. And we really got to know his Brittany and Deb, his family really well. And we're like, Hey dude, let's go forward. And then we hired Terry to originally run the cross a kids program. And then she eventually got into the adult CA classes.
Dallas started doing the Olympic lifting class in 2015. And then Liz was our last hire 2015. And just think about those personalities, and I pray for the people that don't know those guys. They are, all of them are very different personalities. Yes. Very much and we'll talk about that. We can talk about that too.
Just so what made you decide what
[00:24:15] Sam Rhee: was it about those individuals that made you say this
[00:24:19] Chris Tafaro: person's going to be a good firms for sure. We we knew it would be because of his whole family. We knew he had experienced and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
[00:24:25] David Syvertsen: he would be a shoe in, because
[00:24:26] Sam Rhee: He served in the military.
He had been in, involved in chronic. Even when he was serving in Afghanistan, he was part of what
[00:24:33] David Syvertsen: CrossFit Kandahar, which is, I see that. That's so awesome. I have just holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. So that,
[00:24:39] Sam Rhee: that was a no brainer for most people, I think. Yep. And his personality is such that he's such a
[00:24:44] David Syvertsen: solid straightforward.
Like you could trust that guy to the end of the earth trust,
[00:24:48] Chris Tafaro: trust thing was always a problem. We always wanted to make sure we can trust people. So we didn't want to hire somebody from the outside. We wanted them to have. Family. Do you think we didn't want the, we didn't want their relationship with members to be weird or different, or like they're going out with a certain group of members and they were leaving people out.
We knew storm was like a family guy and he was going to, he had his family and he was going to go home at night and that was it. And I think that was big for us.
[00:25:12] David Syvertsen: The scariest part of running a business is getting other people to start working. Yeah. It's the biggest responsibility, the biggest decision you're ever gonna make, because they don't care as much as you and they shouldn't.
But the thing is they can ruin it in let me ask
[00:25:25] Sam Rhee: you this. I don't know if you want to talk about it or not, but you had also done some other things, which didn't always work out, like farm out the gym for other classes at that time.
[00:25:35] David Syvertsen: What do you mean by
[00:25:37] Sam Rhee: like you would.
There was another instructor who would come in and do stuff
[00:25:41] David Syvertsen: sometimes. Oh yeah. So yeah. So basically, when you see a gym that's growing right from the outside, say you're someone on the outside, Germans growing and we still deal with this people, other people see opportunity, and this is like a natural thing that happens in business in general, when you are a new business and, That you need money to keep this thing going. And there's someone kind of selling you this idea that they can get more people to come. If you let them do X, Y, and Z at your gym, you're naturally, dude, let's go. And that's where, you can easily make a bad decision in that moment if you don't have the experience. And we didn't have any running this kind of decision. So going into a situation where someone's going to sell you the idea that they're going to get new members to your.
If you let me do this at your gym, your natural inclination is to say yes, and it went, if it doesn't work out and in that whole situation, it didn't work out right? Not
[00:26:33] Sam Rhee: through anyone else's specific fault. I think I just don't think it was maybe the best match at the
[00:26:37] David Syvertsen: time. And that the personality, like what Chris is talking about, is you need to trust people. And Adam, you can talk to Adam for a little bit and unknow that he's a trustworthy. And then you start to know his family a little bit. And you start to, we knew Adam through Brittany and Debbie, and that's a huge thing where someone that comes in off the street and promises this idea to you, you don't know them and you don't know anyone in their family.
Like you have to have your guard up. And that, that's a huge deal. Yeah. And then,
[00:27:07] Sam Rhee: Terry and Dallas and Liz, those were all the other three new
[00:27:09] Chris Tafaro: hires that you had. Yeah. Mean we Terry learned from us, like we we wanted to hire coaches from within, so we knew Terry, we knew she was solid and we knew Matt and we knew what her personality was.
Personality is a huge thing with, with coaches and how she would be with the members. Yeah,
[00:27:23] David Syvertsen: That's what Chris said. You want them to know CrossFit through us because CrossFit is taught poorly and other areas. And there's even gyms in this era that I don't agree with how they do things.
If these people that come in with those preconceived notions and they want to put their spin on what we do here, it can ruin our product, it can ruin what we've been trying to do. And Terry learned, Terry is one of our first ever free trial athletes came on a Saturday and remember she crushed the workout.
She's partnered with Debbie Gilmore. And I remember back then you stalk people on Facebook. Like I remember going to her Facebook, I'm like, yo, like this is a babe, that's going to come here. And she can be like a female presence, which honestly I think it's really. We had Ashley who had a full-time career and would never be there at nine 30 during the day.
Terry comes in, works out at nine 30 generally. And at that point she had done dozens of nine 30 classes and obviously very Intuit, very fit. What I also liked about her was her teaching background. I think someone that has a teaching background is a big deal. They know how to teach and that's a big part of coaching and this thing, and remember.
Just looking at her and saying Hey, if we want to grow, the female population at the gym, it can't be Chris. I teach all the classes. Hell yeah. Like they just don't relate to us. Like when we, like one of the biggest things that we fought with women in the past, not fought, but had to sell is that you're not going to get huge.
If you start lifting with. And that's a whole nother deep body image issue, social issue, but that was what we would always have to sell. And like, here we are, Chris and I have just got done benching with veins popping out of her saying, yo, you're not going to get big. If you left way to promise, like Chris, where's your protein to it.
Terry comes in just like very athletic looking fit, woman, having her female presence around, along with Ashley was a huge deal for us taking off. And I think that any gyms out there. If you don't have that kind of presence on your staff and in my opinion, multiple ways, it's going to dampen what you can do.
Absolutely people relate to what they see, and that's just is what it is. And then Liz, right? Lit here we are Liz. Liz has come such a long way. From her first time coming to bison, she's someone I talked to a lot of beginners about. I said the yo, when that girl came.
Yeah to buy, since she couldn't walk 200 meters, without getting nauseous. We didn't have to talk about our outfit, the pink Gucci jacket, herself fingernails. Yeah. But she she's a great example for people that come to this gym, that if you really do buy into the program and just forget about your short term embarrassments, your short-term struggles that shit's gonna.
But you're going to have to keep showing up. You have to keep showing up. And that, that, I think that's a huge thing. What Liz brought to the table like, and, she was only a year and a half into it. And the here's a debatable topic, if you're coming in from the outside and you know that the instructor of the class had never seen the inside of a gym two years prior.
And she's the one leading the class. Yeah. What do you think about that? Yeah, I know a lot of people that'd be like, dude, that's garbage. I went to college and I studied muscle groups for four years and I can name every single muscle in the body. Like I should be in a truck. And I think the big part of CrossFit coaching, that's a big part of training.
Coaching here is connecting with humans, connecting with people and yes, you got to know your stuff for sure. But you have to know how to teach it too.
[00:30:38] Chris Tafaro: Yeah. I think she's great at connecting with people. I think that's what we saw in her. It wasn't like she, she hadn't, she had no experience. She's never, she said she never saw the inside of a gym.
Like she thought every gym that laid a CrossFit gym. Yeah. I know. I remember one day you were coaching nine 30 and I came in for, the day classes and you're out back and PA your class was running. And I went out to check in with you, and now we're talking, the class was down the street running, and I'm looking down the street and I'm like, who is that on the right.
And, That's Liz and I'm like, She's got that, like sprinter kind of a gate like that uh, like that. Dave looked at me and he goes, maybe she's an athlete after all. And we just looked at each other and laugh, and I tell is that story, Liz also was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot on her first day.
Okay. Like before she went in for the free trial class, she was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot, but what you were saying, like how can people trust. She's ma she might be the only one that, that could have turned it around like that in two years. Like it's not it. And people trust her 100%.
Like she came. She obviously was an athlete, always just didn't maybe it wasn't unleashed. She also had setbacks too. She broke her foot. And during that time, it wasn't like she didn't come to the gym. She came every day and worked on upper body stuff. And she got so good at pull-ups.
She got muscle-ups like all that. And then she was. when she would figure something out, she could, she would really be good at telling other people, like some of the other women and girls, how to do, like how to do this. And it was just like a really natural thing for her to be a coach.
Yeah. When we asked her to be a coach, I think. If you had told me, a couple months earlier, I would have been like, I don't know if that's the right decision, but by the time when we decided yeah, it was a no-brainer. Yup. I
[00:32:15] Sam Rhee: mean, I was at bison at the time and it made all the sense in the world.
She was obviously her pre CrossFit life was, lifestyle was different. But when I saw her, she had been a couple of months in, she was clearly. Naturally gifted in a lot of ways. I remember back squatting and Dave was just like,
[00:32:32] David Syvertsen: wow,
[00:32:32] Sam Rhee: just wait until she gets some more experience under her belt.
And then her personality, the way she engages with everyone, she was very naturally someone who you knew would
[00:32:44] David Syvertsen: do really well
[00:32:46] Sam Rhee: as an instructor and someone who is, so enthusiastic about everything that she does.
[00:32:50] David Syvertsen: So I thought that made total sense. I think she's one of the clearest examples that.
We might fight this politically down the road. There are a lot of states right now that are trying to mandate a certain degree to be able to coach any sort of fitness at all. Then there, there are some states that are fighting this right now, and I don't know if this will ever make it sweat in New Jersey, but you need to have the sports and conditioning Degree or certificate the NASA NAC and the one that you got, the NASM that you need that to instruct any fitness class whatsoever and cross it's been fighting it.
And I don't know if it's ever going to come to fruition, in this gym alone. And there's a lot of crosses out there as well that don't have that kind of certification that I'll take that kind of coach over anyone that I go to New York sports club and find someone that's just watching you do tricep extensions.
Because the one thing. We do better than your typical personal trainers, the personal connection with multiple people at once. It's really hard to do. And it's really hard. It's a skill that needs to be developed as some people like Liz have a natural talent to be able to take over a room and really relate to everyone in there.
[00:33:55] Sam Rhee: I want to talk about the rest of the coaches, but before we do so to talk about how you added Dallas in for Oli at the time,
[00:34:01] David Syvertsen: Basically Dallas always wanted to be involved in bison. When we left, he had started Hoboken when I was leaving and we over, we competed with each other, competed against each other and we just had little bit.
But Olin, that was a really trendy thing. And cross it gyms from 2014 to 2017, I'd say tad and Oli coach and an Olympic lifting coach, because it is, there's so much skill involved and there's a lot of specialty coaches out there and there's a lot of demand. A lot of people want to get better at it. And you can't, you're not always going to get better by just showing up to class once a week.
At some point that's just not going to be enough. And, Dallas had he was actually competing in the sport of Olympic. Weightlifting at the time he had a passion for it. He got the USA w certification and he is a very naturally gifted athlete. One of the
[00:34:45] Sam Rhee: most naturally gifted athletes.
I've seen
[00:34:47] David Syvertsen: a really high level basketball player like that quick Twitch explosive, and that translates to Olympic lifting very well. But what made him different was he was very good at taking someone that was not a naturally good athlete that didn't have that quick Twitch. And he could really give you a couple of little tips on.
Moving the bar a little bit faster, getting underneath it drills like he was. So that was one thing that like, Hey, thous, we trust you a, we know you B he was out here a lot in 2014, 2015, working out. So the kind of community knew him a little bit. And we said, Hey, we're going to follow this trend, hire an oldie coach.
And he was the guy
[00:35:22] Sam Rhee: I took some of his classes, not enough because they would be in the evening. And that was difficult for my schedule. Yeah. But he was one of the best
[00:35:31] David Syvertsen: instructors. He really
[00:35:32] Sam Rhee: got it that I had four. Olympic lifting. Yeah. He broke it down and the way Oli classes go is very different than a regular CrossFit class, he would work you up to a sweat before you even got to the barbell.
Yeah. And then when you did do reps, they weren't a ton, but they were heavy. And so the whole philosophy between only lifting and CrossFit in terms of the training was really different. Yeah. I know people have asked whether or not there's going to be more Oly lifting. So
[00:36:04] David Syvertsen: that's what I was going to touch on is once you start owning a gym for a year or two people start wanting more and they're there, they have every right to at least ask about it, inquire about it.
We think about the amount of people in this gym that do more than just the cross, the class, whether it's next level, whether it's throwing conditioning program, whether it's open gym Sunday, like nothing. We did an open gym. There's 50 people here every Sunday. Now, powerlifting media, powerlifting, all this stuff.
You have to, as a, as an owner, you have to look for ways to fill these people's needs and desires, right? Because if other gems are doing, especially like you might lose them, but if you really are here to help. There is only, like I said, there's only a certain level. You can help someone with Olympic lifting, doing it once a week, maybe every once, every two weeks.
And if someone really wants to dive in you should try to supply that for them.
[00:36:51] Sam Rhee: I really wish I could go back and take those classes now, because I know a little more now and I could actually use that training more. Cause I understand more.
[00:36:59] David Syvertsen: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Like this past summer we did that thing with Dan Dodd from tri-state barbell, where you. Where he ran, I think it was eight weeks or six weeks, twice a week. And it's a different vibe. Like the no music, you're not maxing out. You're not sweating, breathing heavy, like you're just really working on these fine points and there's always a lot of demand for.
