S02E40 The ORIGIN OF CF BISON PT 3

We continue by talking about the coaches at CrossFit Bison - how did Chris and Dave choose the coaches and why did they choose them? What do they consider important in finding the right coach?

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. 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.

Along with special guest, David's business partner and fellow coach @christafaro, we discuss 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.

@crossfit @crossfitgames #crossfit #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #agoq #clean #fitness #ItAllStartsHere #CrossFitOpen #CrossFit #CrossFitCommunity @CrossFitAffiliates

S02E40 The ORIGIN OF CF BISON PT 3

[00:00:00] Sam Rhee: After a Dallas, Liz, and Terry and Adam storms you added some more people. In

[00:00:06] David Syvertsen: 2016. Yeah. I just, I I'm always nervous. My chronological order is going to be off this stuff. So I just want to make sure I have it, but I'm 99% sure. Yes. Adam Ramson was next. All right. We've had Adam Allan, Adam was on episode.

One of heard fit, caught podcasts, the most listens to

[00:00:22] Sam Rhee: what the hell. People love talking about breathing and that,

[00:00:24] David Syvertsen: and they love Adam. Yeah, Adam's very intelligent, but the. No add Adam was the funny story about Adam and Alaina that I always like to share is when they first came to the gym, they moved out from Hoboken, him and his wife, Elena came out.

They had came with some CrossFit type experience, like group fitness, intense workouts, that kind of stuff. And they were one of the few people that actually, they come, they check out the space McKay. I'm about to coach a class. You can come watch if you want. I normally say that just as of current.

They always leave. Adam end up take two chairs out of the office, by the way. I'm pretty sure. And they bring it into the gym and watch the entire class start to finish. And I was like, yo, okay, this is real, huh. And Adam kind of dove head first. And I remember partnering with him on a Saturday on a Saturday partner workout and I just wanted to get a feel for him what he's like.

And he's just one of those guys too. It's almost similar to storms. You know early on, very straightforward, trustworthy, hard worker, even keel, very even keeled. And then as you get to know him more, how intelligent he is, and he's a teacher and you're like, dude, and at the point we were like, all right, we're ready to add another coach to the.

And we, that another thing that helped us out, we never needed another. It was always like, all right, I think we're ready for one let's let's add, and sometimes when you need things, you do things you out of desperation example, when we were trying to open up the gym, we almost took these spaces that would have not worked, but we needed it at the time and we got lucky, God didn't let us do it.

So, Adam was a guy that we like, all right, I think we're ready for another coach. He's the one. And, anytime. Chris. And I are always on the same page with staffing. Like not none of us, like sometimes I have an idea. He doesn't like it. He has an idea. I don't like it. If we're not on the same page with staffing, we won't go forward.

We have to both be on board. And I don't think I got the sense out of my mouth with Adam and he's like he had done. And so we asked him, I said, it's a little bit of a commitment, it's a. Yeah. Talk to your wife about it. And I think within a week or two, he was like, yo man, he got his level two.

And also in 2016 was the Carlo to Carlos. The guy I knew growing up he actually was probably, he was not a member at bison before. Some changes at a gym in the area across the 2 0 1 change owners and Brian was looking to change just a change of scenery at that point, him and his wife.

And I remember telling him, I was like, Hey, I do he, he came to me just so everyone knows out there public, I didn't poach anyone. All right. But the he came to me and said like, Hey, if you're ever looking for another coach, I'd be interested and said, all right, cool. How about you just be a member of.

And so he came in and he, one of his first exposures to the gym was the bison bowl. I think this was the second ever by symbol. I always remember it by programming and that year we did a three, three, a three rep max front squat with a jerk at the end. And his weight was like 75 pounds heavier. Then next person,

[00:03:09] Sam Rhee: they bison bulls.

They intramural competition. Yes, we

[00:03:12] David Syvertsen: have. Yeah, by some intramural competition. We'll talk about it. More detailed coming up. But Bryant, that was one of his first exposures to the. And I think he started coaching a couple months after that. And just another rock, solid guy. That's just hard worker, trustworthy, reliable, all that good stuff.

And also just knows a lot about strength training. He ran a barbell class at 2 0 1 for a while Olympic lifting. And I remember we've had him coach right now. He's coaching was that he dances around a little bit mornings, nights, he's very flexible. He helps us out where we need it, but I always want to get.

In barbell classes because he, he is, he's very advanced with that kind of stuff. He, last

[00:03:49] Sam Rhee: year he worked a lot on his Oli. I know. He's one of those guys that you would, you think you would always see at a CrossFit gym? Just a really big,

[00:03:57] David Syvertsen: like strong, thick, thick, heavy lifting

[00:04:00] Sam Rhee: weightlifter dude, but then you see them do the gymnastics stuff

[00:04:04] David Syvertsen: and he's incredibly agile heard someone say at the gym today.

It's like, how does that guy do that?

[00:04:09] Sam Rhee: I love watching him for his overhead movements. Cause he has probably one of the fastest split jerks I've ever seen in my life. It's so smooth and quick. It is

[00:04:18] David Syvertsen: so very powerful.

[00:04:19] Sam Rhee: You would think, oh yeah, this is the one who is the, meat head at the CrossFit gym who just likes lifting heavy.

And this guy has like everything. Yeah,

[00:04:27] David Syvertsen: no he is. And Chris, I always remember Chris said. You want to learn gymnastics from a big guy that weighs 230 pounds on 130 pounds that were skinny genie. Exactly. What am I going to learn from that? Because like those guys, it's not natural for him, he had to learn how to do things.

All right. So that's 2016. We'll get into the rest of the coaches later. And just again, we're trying not to like, only talk about the coaches are talking about why another thing with Brian and Adam, neither one of them are really like that loud, intense vocal guys. I've walked into Brian classes and I'm like, dude, is the music even on right now?

And he's probably has to turn it up a little bit, but he, he is. No. I think people like that, I am, I have a lot of confirmation bias, just like we all do. I like loud energy intense, but a lot of people don't a lot of people. And I think that it really does help to have that kind of personality coaching that's, Especially, if you're banged up, you don't feel the workout.

You don't really feel great. You don't want to be in that loud, intense environment. Like Chris is like that, like we always joke about the music, but fish. Yeah. People like it. They want to feel calm. Sometimes when they work out, there's a time and place for the energy, Friday night lights, here we go, four nights away, five nights away, but there is also a time and place to get that out.

And I think that's really important that the personality of our coaches show that. Did

[00:05:44] Sam Rhee: you guys intentionally pick different people because all of these people are so. Different different backgrounds, different training situations, like Dallas has been an athlete, his entire life. Liz never did anything until she got to cross.

Yeah. A military guy like, Brian and Adam Rams and our teachers, but two different teachers. Ha did you intentionally pick all these different ages and ranges and

[00:06:09] Chris Tafaro: graphics? I mean, it wasn't like we had to fill like a spot, like it's like a, like a sitcom or something. We needed an actor that does this.

We need this person, the loud person that collaborates. It's not like that. It just, it played out like that. But. I think you just trust their personality, personality around other people. And they just like you don't really know what they're going to be like in front of a class, but then it just works with some, and it just, it worked with all these.

[00:06:31] David Syvertsen: And even as we move forward now, like our next coach that we hire, when is it going to be like, when the time's right, but I think one thing that we do, like back then, it's do we trust the person. Do they really want to help other people? I think that's like the common ground with all of them.

They do want to help.

[00:06:47] Chris Tafaro: Yeah. That's that's, that's, that's huge. Yeah, it has to be that

[00:06:51] David Syvertsen: way. It's not because they like CrossFit. It's not because they want the free membership. It's they want to make an impact. They want to help people. I want to make people better. I do think naturally though, we do have I think like this, I'm not going to speak for Chris.

I do want different personalities, so like I do want different walks of life, like I want people with kids. I want people without. I want people that played sports their whole life. I want people that didn't play sports their whole life because now that we have over 200 people that come here, you are going to have a lot of different walks of life that work out.

And then some of them, you can be the best coach in the world. They might not relate to you. So they might relate to somebody else because of that background. Like your background is really different than Elvis. And are you the oldest coach? You are by far?

No, but there are a lot of people in our gym look at, you might not even realize it. It's dude, that guy looks like. Yeah. And he's in his fifties and he's, and he's got a full-time job. Oh my

[00:07:45] Sam Rhee: God. If I hear that one more time, I hope I'm like you, when I get to be your age someday, I don't need that

[00:07:50] David Syvertsen: anymore for decades, like Sunday, way off in the future.

Okay. Thanks for that. But I really, I look at that all the time. Like we're right now. At some point we're going to hire someone else. I don't know when it's going to be, it might be in two years, it might be three years, but you want that person to add a different element to the thing, but at the baseline, I want to help people needs to do that.

So

[00:08:11] Sam Rhee: let's look, get your last two hires, Kayla and Mike. Cause they were about as different as you can be. One is just out of school, right? The other one has been coaching professionally and CrossFit for longer than. Yep. Where did you guys go with those two?

[00:08:27] Chris Tafaro: I mean, I think Kayla w we always thought would probably one day be a coach.

We met her when she was in college and then, we've known her every year and she was always, I mean, her field is fitness too. Nutrition. Yeah, fitness, nutrition. Oh, she

[00:08:40] Sam Rhee: works as a trainer, right? Yeah. For sports.

[00:08:42] Chris Tafaro: So I think that was very natural for her to want to help us out.

And she always helped us out anyway, because that was the way she paid for a membership. There was times when Kayla would just like, take the cardboard boxes to recycling and stuff, just to offset some of the payments that she couldn't make when she was like, I don't know.

Can we, we always like, yeah, we knew her when she was 18. Yeah. I'm

[00:09:00] David Syvertsen: looking at her picture right now. We got the open party from 2015 and we joke with Kayla all the time. She was one of the first people that ever came to bison. Yeah. She came to a. 14.5. So she was in here March of 2014 with a friend of mine.

I forget the relationship that I think she either played volleyball for him or was it was a student under him or something, but she was one of the first people. And you just knew personality wise. She had. You know, Like the, I think that's one thing that's really cool about this job is you get to see a lot of different personalities.

Good and bad here. And like we are, I would say we're personality experts w with a lot of kind of stuff in relationship that comes from coaching, but also just tracking people for so many years that you really, you know, some of your friends with some, you're not friends with somebody likes some you don't like, and, but you still, you have to be there serving them, respecting them and working for them really.

That's what you are in the coach. You're working for the people and Kayla's personality stood out to me. No, she was constantly going back and forth between school. So we'd see her. Then we wouldn't see her. Every time she came back, she was one of those people that like lights up. I just even to this day, she's a, there's, there's a different feel in the gym with Kayla's in it.

And I think that's you don't say that about a lot of people and she's one of them. And now that she has she has education levels and she's good at conveying and really giving out that information and teaching that none of us have, and she, whether it's your body hurts, whether it's nutrition, whether it's movement based, whether it's anatomy based.

And I've always thought she's a rockstar. She's gonna, I'll probably be working for her someday. Yeah. I mean, she's, she was

[00:10:27] Chris Tafaro: mature when she was 18. Yeah. But, but, but also still has that like lively spirit too. So, not many 18 year old girls can two guys in their like thirties, relate to, but we did like right off the bat.

Every time she came back, he's a hard worker, still fun though. And like youthful, but you know, like it was just a. There's not a lot of people like her. In fact, kid Checko said to me, during her warmup, Chris, you have to, you have to hire more Kayla's and I was like, okay. Let's like I said, they're very hard to find, there's not a lot of them.

[00:11:00] David Syvertsen: I agree with. And

[00:11:01] Sam Rhee: then with Mike, it's a no brainer. I mean, obviously to be able to add someone that, that kind of experience

[00:11:06] David Syvertsen: and yeah. I mean, I think there there's a little bit of a backstory with Mike. I mean, he goes way back to us without Mike was coaching us at cross Hoboken 2011, 2012.

Rockstar coach very sought after. Back then, and now even if he put himself out there as a free agent right now to have people knocking on his door and just a very unique personality. I remember leaving Hoboken, saying, I want a coach like Mike someday that he really was my inspiration. And so we obviously kept in touch and he was one of the people that came.

On that grand opening party in April for Fike on bed. He moved around a little bit, got out of the CrossFit, spacial a little bit, came back into it. Things weren't going very well at a different gym. And someone reached out to us and said, Hey, if there's ever an opportunity for Mike to coach at your gym, I think, this would be the time to do it.

And I remember Chris, and honestly, I'll tell you what didn't really financially make sense for us at the time to add someone a full-time salary, but we looked at each other and we may never get this opportunity again. That was,

[00:11:58] Sam Rhee: it was that unanimous. That was a big decision to make the hire this whole time for huge,

[00:12:02] David Syvertsen: huge.

But

[00:12:03] Chris Tafaro: we figured like where we are now in this space, like going forward, we need someone like Mike's stability. We need it. Yeah. His schedule, his enthusiasm, like the fact that, he has so much experience like it's right. We had to think ahead with that one.

And it doesn't make sense now it's going to hurt. But, and then we ran into a roadblock, like COVID started right away. But

[00:12:23] David Syvertsen: so like prior to us, had we moved to this new space, we should probably talk about this next. But we moved to this new space, April, 2000. 19. And we hired Mike about eight months later because we were like, Hey, we're going big here.

I don't know if everyone really realizes how aggressive the move was to come over here. Short-term and long-term. And because we were being aggressive with moving over here, we had to improve the product and part of improving the product was. Assuming that you're going to get more members, so you can pay for a new coach of mice caliber, but also giving Chris the leeway to spend more time growing business, like doing what he's good at behind the scenes stuff, because Chris, at the time it was still.

And this was when, when Mike came in it really good. It took some off my plate, but it took a huge off his plate. Very helpful that if we didn't do it, who knows what would have happened with the business big picture.

[00:13:14] Chris Tafaro: And there's a small window Mike's available. Like now he's not going to be available in a month.

He has to get a job and he's very ill people want. Yeah. So we had to jump on it. We had to jump on it. He wanted to come here to that. That was a good thing. We didn't have to sell mic on it. Yeah. He was all in if we were in.

[00:13:29] Sam Rhee: Well, yeah. Let me ask you a quick question about the coaches.

They all move excellently. Is that a prerequisite? Do you have to move well in order to like, you don't have to lift the most weight. You don't have to do every movement, but do you have to move with excellence in order to be a good

[00:13:46] David Syvertsen: coach? I mean Hm. I mean, yeah. I think the intention needs to be there and you're only going to know the true intention of being around someone for a long time.

Do I move well with everything? Like I'd like to say yes, but it's subjective. Like I bet there's some Olympic lifters out there that would watch me lift and say, don't move well. And Crow with CrossFit standards. Yeah. I think you need to move well or have a standard for yourself that you're always trying to.

Like that standard. Shouldn't always be a moving target where like, oh, I'm older now. I don't need to squat down below parallel, I think that's a huge thing, but I do think it's important that we echo that it's not performance-based. I hate when Jim's hire the best athletes that coach it's such a faulty approach on so many levels.

And I've, I know that our coaches in this gym and outside of this gym that feel pressure on certain days where there are movements, they cannot. And they need to go coach someone. And I'll say I'll put myself out there with pistols on most days when we have pistols, I can't just go pop, pop, man. I need to warm up like 20 minutes before doom.

So I'm not going to demo that. I either don't demo. I try to talk my way through it, or I find someone in class. I can do it. I remember what they're going to ask. No, no, no, no. I asked Elena one time. And I was like, oh shit. But yeah, whenever there was a pistol day and someone comes in that can do them thank God, but that's part of adjusting to it, to being a coach.

But to answer your question, the intention of you moving well should probably have as much intensity behind. Then performing well, score wise. What do you think Chris? Definitely.

[00:15:14] Chris Tafaro: I mean, you have to the basics. Okay. My push jerks at a certain weight, the, the form gets ugly, but with a PVC, with a bar, I can demonstrate a good, a good rep squatting depth, things like that.

Gymnastics, I can do the movement. I do think that's important. I think that you can. Teach you can't demo a wobble and that squat all the way down like that has to be there right after you have to be able to get, do the reps, according to the standard of the reps. Not, not so much, it doesn't matter if you can do ring muscle ups, really, but the core movements, the movements that we teach in

[00:15:47] David Syvertsen: beginner pull up,

[00:15:47] Chris Tafaro: you have to be able to demonstrate a good hang power, clean, a good front squat, a good push press.

I pushed her, split jerk, things like that. And the standards have to be there. Unless, like storms, he has his elbow. Well, you can't lock out his arms. So, there's little things like that that are fine, but I would never, we would never ask a coach to coach if they were a half squatter or,

[00:16:08] David Syvertsen: just look at that's part of knowing these people.

Like when you, we grow our staff organically, right? From, from inside and a part of the evaluation process before asking them the coaches is watching them work out for. Yeah, like we we've had people and this is, honestly, I feel like humbled by it is that we've had a lot of people ask the coach at the time.

Over the last year that have previous coaching experience and there's a lot that goes into it and you can't say yes to everyone. I think there's a lot of capable coaches out there. You can't say yes to everyone, but part of it is I want you to be here for a year or two. I want to watch you a move be how do you interact with people?

See, over the course of a year or two, you're going to go through some bad times. Probably you're a human being. Like, how do you respond to that? Do you treat people different? Like it's all encompassing. And part of it is the quality of movement that you show. Yeah. And how consistently.

[00:16:56] Chris Tafaro: Yeah. And another thing, then I think our coaches now are getting like the more experienced that this, this happens with.

Like after a few years, when at first, when you're a new coach, you always feel like you have to have a better score than most of the people or whatever, but a really good coach is okay with getting beat once in a while and appreciating the fact that they got beat and is actually happy for that person.

I think like at first, like in Hoboken, Oh that guy's got a better score than me and I was coaching the class. That's not, I should've done better. But then. It happens more and more often. And I'm actually, I don't feel any kind of like hatred towards that score jealousy anymore.

Like I'm, I'm all for pushing them to be like the best that they can be. And I think it took a, it took a lot of, some of our coaches a while to, to get to that point. And I think. I think they're all

[00:17:44] Sam Rhee: there. Oh yeah. I don't think anyone has an ego that overwhelms them or is not humble.

[00:17:50] David Syvertsen: Or so you tell us Sam, like you started in 2017, right?

I actually remember the first. I wanted you to coach. I think I started talking to you about this at legends, at a bar at, at at the, one of the restaurant tables. Legends is a local bar that I think has shut down. But anyway and we were sitting at a table in 2006. I remember just like throwing like, oh like, I wonder if you would ever coach, I w I didn't actually formally asked you, you were like, hell no.

All right. So that was the night when I was like, all right, that's fine. Coaching is not for everyone. And then I think a year later, we it resurfaced for whatever reason. What, what is it like? To, to really go from, Hey, I have enough going on in my life. I don't want to coach. I just want to work out here to that mindset shifting, and all of a sudden you're in charge of the room, but what what's that like?

Well, I

[00:18:37] Sam Rhee: definitely remember coming to you at some point saying, listen, I, this is something that I'm really interested in. And part of that was. The organization, I mean, what bison is and the people, and some of it was knowing that I, I, I ha I want to help. I

[00:18:54] David Syvertsen: want you to could, and you could make it bad.

[00:18:56] Sam Rhee: I could get. Yes. And, and I realized that, Most of the other coaches, I'm not coming from an athletic background. , I do have a skillset, but it's in a totally different specialty. But, I felt like it was something that I wanted to do personally, to challenge myself and to also, maybe I could help people who.

Are coming from a similar background from me, if you're injured or if you're older or if you're just learning this stuff CrossFits changed a lot over the past 10, 15 years, and we are more scientific when we're knowledgeable. We're more organized in terms of what we do and how you guys program and what you guys do.

And. I'm all in on it. I try if I truly believe in the CrossFit methodology, I believe in it a hundred percent.

[00:19:42] David Syvertsen: With,

[00:19:43] Sam Rhee: Some caveats about certain things. Um, And if I want, if I believe in it, then I should be part of it and I should try to help others. The best way I know how, and this is the best organism.

I've ever seen in any field period with, with the coaches you guys have and what you guys do. So there's no reason for me not to want to be part of it. If you see it excellence, you want to be part of that excellence. And that was one of the biggest part of it was just wanting to try

[00:20:15] David Syvertsen: to contribute to that.

Yeah. That's awesome. And you have, you've definitely done that next. I appreciate it. So let's keep that theme going because I know. We're going to backtrack just a little bit in terms of some things that we've done through the gym Steve-O days video, the pump video, like it did it. I think Terry put this perfectly, like there's so many pieces to the puzzle that really make this place up, that you don't even realize it until that video came out.

But I almost thought he saw your notes. Yeah, I know. I not

[00:20:42] Chris Tafaro: on everything

[00:20:43] David Syvertsen: and talking to me, forget anything. Yeah. Th th there's thing, you, you could just run your classes every single day. It'd be a quality product and that's it don't forget don't do anything. It could be quality, but at some point it's like I said, the people want more.

And it's no it's on us to try to figure out all what's too much. What's not enough. And we really wanted to make this more than just a gym, more than just a workout. So you have to create these social environments where, for the people that do want to make some friends, here you go for it.

And if not, don't just come work out, go home. There's a lot of people that do that, too. Couple of things that we've done here. All right. We have the bison ball, which is the intramural intro gym con competition team competition, the open parties. I'm looking at pictures right now. We've got to get these things up this week.

We started this in 2015. We've done them every year minus. Um, Which was only last year. So we have, but we haven't done one of them since the October, 2019 open. So this, this upcoming Friday, Hopefully nobody gets arrested. It's going to be a great time. Um, The bison benchmark workouts, this is also Chris's idea.

When we started the first one DB yeah, he think about how far the programming has come. This was the workout because honestly, this is all our gym could do at the time. Em, rap em, rap 20. Alright. I'm pretty sure it's AMRAP 2015. Uh, Sorry, hold on. 15 push press 75 55, 10 kettlebell swings, RX 35 pounds for guys 26 for the girls five.

AMRAP 20. And it actually, I mean, Hey, anything's a good workout, a good workout stuff. We go work out. But even the two years later, we redid it and we're like do this too late. So we had to call it fat, a fat DB and obesity. That's not nothing to do with actual DB. Yeah. So yeah, obesity B is a same workout, but the barbell.

I think 1 35, 15 reps she'll push breast to our shoulder, overhead 75, 70 pound kettlebell, five burpees, really tough

[00:22:38] INITIAL SYNC WAV: workout.

[00:22:39] Sam Rhee: You know what I love about the benchmarks, which was genius is that everyone did it once. And then you would program to help people get better at it over a certain period of time.

And then they would do it again. And the person who made the most improvement, that was their name on their workout and if you're a really good athlete, Even if you sandbag the first one, you can't really make up the difference. And the people who actually got their names on the workout were really people who legitimately were able to.

Right. And you weren't the most experienced CrossFitter you weren't really the most beginner. It was mostly the people in the middle who were making a lot of progress and learning. And for someone in that stage, that is the best

[00:23:19] David Syvertsen: thing you could possibly do. If you think about all the names that are up there, it's they're, they're not the people that come in and just crush every single workout oh, of course they get more attention. No, it's never that, it's the people that really came in with just like that laser focus for the eight weeks in between. And they get their name on a wall. Like we're still working with the names on the wall.

We're still working on getting, yeah, we're working on getting them plaques for the wall here, to actually, and get all 18 up on the wall. But I also think another part of the bison benchmark that tie people together. Yes. And we, we usually show that

[00:23:51] Chris Tafaro: to hold people to those, like

[00:23:52] David Syvertsen: hold people to a standard.

Yeah. And what are the, and what are the sub con one of the bullet points under that? Tie the group together was I'm telling you when you have a judge, you get to know that person, especially when it's a long workout, you see them struggle. This is where I think personal connection comes across it. You really see people's struggle here.

And if you have a half a soul, like you're going to try to encourage them a little bit. And I can't tell you how many times this, I can't count how many times over the years open bison benchmarks where someone's like, yo, that judge really helped me. They didn't know each other. They weren't friends with, we just paired them up because they were standing next to.

You know, And that, that's a huge thing. That's really been an awesome thing to see and be a part of other things that really tied the group together. Local competitions, we just had one last week at Waldwick cross at Waldwick. They did it ran an awesome job. We've done that two, a one, the rack, not a weight down the shore, like in the city, we cross it Hoboken.

And the bicycle, we ran a competition one time. And what happens there, where people start to, oh, people really care about me. They want to see me. If you're competing, you have, especially with bison, you have 20, 30 people there sometimes driving like an hour, spending four hours at this thing on a Saturday, then driving an hour home to watch you do thrusters and pull ups and clap your hands.

Like it's ridiculous. If I told some of my friends outside of CrossFit, that people do this, they're like, this is a Colt, is that, but that, that's where we, we signed up for a lot of competitions, our gym, just a lot of people wanted to compete from that 2016, 2019 period. And, everyone has their own reasons for wanting to compete.

But one of the, one of the things that you really start to see is there's a huge sea of support here. And we have two coming up in may, one in Shrewsbury, one at 9 0 8. Really excited about both. Yes, I can't wait. And I think combined. I think, listen, I have this tally. I think combined, we have 24 people signed up and a lot of

[00:25:39] Sam Rhee: them have never competed in a cop before.

This'll be their first time.

[00:25:42] David Syvertsen: And I I'm telling you this right now. It's gonna, it's gonna change their perspective on cross it because there's nothing like competing, but also the support that you're going to, people strangers are gonna come from this gym and support you, and we have a couple more, a couple of other things that just kind of like build the community social outings, fundraisers, and our reset slash challenges.

So social media. This is hard to do now, is there so many people and you always feel like someone's getting left out, but you know, early 2015, 2016, you would send out a message to the entire gym. Hey, let's go to the beer garden in Hoboken and you get 50 people to show up. And again, those are the moments like as an orange.

None of these people knew each other. Yeah. None of them. And if like we're not seeking credit and saying that, I'm just saying, it's so cool to be around that none of these people would have known each other. Liz just got married this past may right over about a year ago. And the amount of people wedding from the Shannon's what if, what if we never opened this gym?

Like what? It

[00:26:42] Chris Tafaro: was an amazing, it was amazing to see her wedding party was, was people from the gym. I think, I don't know.

[00:26:48] David Syvertsen: The, the fundraisers bicyclists cancer, we re we've raised this gym in fundraisers alone, that the gym has organized. I know some people have had their own side ones have raised over $55,000 for different organizations.

The things we did over COVID for the other gyms it's just a, an awesome thing that people, when people do these things that make themselves feel good and like they're doing things for other people and they do them together as a group. No one's really looking at, oh, that person donated a thousand bucks.

That person didn't need 2000, 200 bucks. It was. The bison community, like this group of people really came together and supplied a lot of funds for, for other purposes. The, the, the re Christmas holiday party, it's more on that in the coming months, everybody, but you know, those kinds of things, you don't always think about that when you open the.

No,

[00:27:35] Chris Tafaro: no, we could not imagine. Now,

[00:27:37] David Syvertsen: now couldn't imagine a, just like the fact that the reads open up their doors like that and the way you guys do, because that's a huge deal. The fact that all these people get dressed up. I remember the first one just like sitting in front of the house and to trying to talk to people.

Like I'm not good in that kind of environment, but it's like, it's so humbling at the same time. It's wow. Like these people, like you think you're like, you know, you open up this gym, these people come to it. It's so much, it means so much more to people than that. Well, I

[00:28:01] Sam Rhee: think as owners, you guys have just put together so much stuff.

And it wasn't for revenue enhancement. It wasn't to somehow grow bison just for the sake of money. No, you guys did all these things because make it better. You wanted to make right. You, you guys cared about the community guys cared about every person you guys cared about, the people who were coming.

And I saw that every time you guys would put something together.

[00:28:25] Chris Tafaro: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we definitely felt well, we don't deserve this. Like this is, this is too much. Yeah. We got lucky. We got lucky. That that was that first party. I remember. Yeah. People like getting dressed up like dresses every, I mean every year, I guess the first year we were in the house and everything, and you open up that literally opened up your house to like all these people that you just met.

[00:28:46] David Syvertsen: And even some people that you probably didn't really know that much, to be honest. So yeah. Those are the things like that. Those that's really when, when you look back at what grew BICE, and I think those are the things that probably just as impactful, if not more than the actual workout. Because that's when they say you're, you're building a community, you're not building a gym.

And if you have that in mind, I think, I think both can happen at the same time.

[00:29:07] Sam Rhee: I think it's still happening now. I mean, it's been harder with COVID. But I've met more of the new people and gotten to know them and connected with them. I mean, it's a little bit easier as a coach because you work with them as well, but I mean, I've gotten to know so many new people I mean, cause it has grown so

[00:29:26] David Syvertsen: quickly, right?

It is. It's crazy. Yeah. The amount of it, we've had people that have been in and out for the, over the past couple of years, for whatever reason. Everyone has their own reasons. And they say like, I hear this all the time. I don't know anyone that's in class. And they were here for years prior to they just it's it's been a lot huge turnover and people come at way different times than they used to.

Now that's different as well. Just, I think COVID has changed so much about people's lives.